Streaming boxes

[Fish]

Originally Posted by Coochie liquor

A friend of mine bought a jailbroke fire box. I'm waiting to hear back on his review of it. Not that I'd buy one as they're probably illegal. Anyone else have a friend with a box like this?

Technically, you don't "Jailbreak" an Android device. The term is "Rooted" for admin control of Android devices. Regardless, the Amazon FireTV doesn't need to be jailbroken or rooted to run an app that will give you every movie/TV show you'd ever want to watch. It's called KODI. There are lots of existing threads here in the Multimedia forum regarding this. I'd be happy to answer any questions. I can tell you how to do just about anything possible with any Android streaming device...

[Coochie liquor]

Originally Posted by Fish

Technically, you don't "Jailbreak" an Android device. The term is "Rooted" for admin control of Android devices. Regardless, the Amazon FireTV doesn't need to be jailbroken or rooted to run an app that will give you every movie/TV show you'd ever want to watch. It's called KODI. There are lots of existing threads here in the Multimedia forum regarding this. I'd be happy to answer any questions. I can tell you how to do just about anything possible with any Android streaming device...

Thanks. I've seen the Kodi threads but really had no idea what they were about so haven't gone into them. I will be checking them out now that I know what they are about.

[epitome1170]

Originally Posted by Fish

Technically, you don't "Jailbreak" an Android device. The term is "Rooted" for admin control of Android devices. Regardless, the Amazon FireTV doesn't need to be jailbroken or rooted to run an app that will give you every movie/TV show you'd ever want to watch. It's called KODI. There are lots of existing threads here in the Multimedia forum regarding this. I'd be happy to answer any questions. I can tell you how to do just about anything possible with any Android streaming device...

Was curious on your opinion of which device you think is the best: Roku 3/4 or Fire stick/tv?

I have been keeping up with the Kodi thread and am thinking about testing this out on one of the tvs, but want to get something easy enough for kids and wife to use as well.

[jjjayb]

Do any of the current devices have a web browser?

[Fish]

Originally Posted by jjjayb

Do any of the current devices have a web browser?

Yes but they mostly suck unless you upgrade your input device with like a gyro mouse and keyboard.

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by jjjayb

Do any of the current devices have a web browser?

None that are worth using...

[Fish]

Originally Posted by epitome1170

Was curious on your opinion of which device you think is the best: Roku 3/4 or Fire stick/tv?

I have been keeping up with the Kodi thread and am thinking about testing this out on one of the tvs, but want to get something easy enough for kids and wife to use as well.

Depends..

Roku is for the most part completely legit legal sources. So you can find lots of content, but lots of the good stuff has a waiting period before you can access it through Roku. Some content is simply not available. Especially when you completely cut cable, as many of the Roku apps for TV channels require you to subscribe to cable to access. Like ESPN. You can use the ESPN app for Roku only if you also subscribe to a cable package that includes ESPN. But Roku shines in being very easy to navigate and use, with little that can go wrong.

FireTV runs KODI. Which is essentially an app that you can add custom plugins to, which scan pirate sources on the internet for movies/TV/sports/concerts/etc, and presents it all in a nice Netflix looking manner. You'll be able to stream almost any movie/TV after it's been released. It usually takes a matter of hours after it airs for popular shows. But because it uses pirate sources, it can sometimes be confusing, or it might show some sources but none of them actually play, or it might start to play and then buffer for 10 minutes. All of which is easy to overcome, but it's different and can frustrate wives/childrens who've never used it before. Usually just explaining that to them and letting them use it for a bit is all that it takes. Admittedly it's not for everyone. But once you get it configured, you can customize and simplify it as much as you'd like. You can even "Subscribe" to your favorite shows, and it will automatically add new episodes of your shows when they're available. You can then turn on the TV, and view your list of shows to see what all new stuff has aired. Once you actually watch it, it will mark the show as watched and remove it from your new episodes list. You can also view all your subscribed shows and watch every episode of every season. There's also addons for streaming live sports of all kinds. And with FireTV, you can add links in KODI to other Android apps like Netflix/Pandora/Amazon Video/Hulu/etc. So you can jump directly from KODI to those native apps and watch content there, then jump right back to KODI and continue there. It's pretty slick once everything is configured. But again, much of the meat of it is relying on pirate sources and an open source community driven framework. So you have to accept what comes along with that. It clearly works great for lots of people. Plenty of support if you know where to look. I've become very familiar with KODI on a range of different platforms, and can answer just about anything you want to know.

[epitome1170]

Originally Posted by Fish

Depends..

Roku is for the most part completely legit legal sources. So you can find lots of content, but lots of the good stuff has a waiting period before you can access it through Roku. Some content is simply not available. Especially when you completely cut cable, as many of the Roku apps for TV channels require you to subscribe to cable to access. Like ESPN. You can use the ESPN app for Roku only if you also subscribe to a cable package that includes ESPN. But Roku shines in being very easy to navigate and use, with little that can go wrong.

FireTV runs KODI. Which is essentially an app that you can add custom plugins to, which scan pirate sources on the internet for movies/TV/sports/concerts/etc, and presents it all in a nice Netflix looking manner. You'll be able to stream almost any movie/TV after it's been released. It usually takes a matter of hours after it airs for popular shows. But because it uses pirate sources, it can sometimes be confusing, or it might show some sources but none of them actually play, or it might start to play and then buffer for 10 minutes. All of which is easy to overcome, but it's different and can frustrate wives/childrens who've never used it before. Usually just explaining that to them and letting them use it for a bit is all that it takes. Admittedly it's not for everyone. But once you get it configured, you can customize and simplify it as much as you'd like. You can even "Subscribe" to your favorite shows, and it will automatically add new episodes of your shows when they're available. You can then turn on the TV, and view your list of shows to see what all new stuff has aired. Once you actually watch it, it will mark the show as watched and remove it from your new episodes list. You can also view all your subscribed shows and watch every episode of every season. There's also addons for streaming live sports of all kinds. And with FireTV, you can add links in KODI to other Android apps like Netflix/Pandora/Amazon Video/Hulu/etc. So you can jump directly from KODI to those native apps and watch content there, then jump right back to KODI and continue there. It's pretty slick once everything is configured. But again, much of the meat of it is relying on pirate sources and an open source community driven framework. So you have to accept what comes along with that. It clearly works great for lots of people. Plenty of support if you know where to look. I've become very familiar with KODI on a range of different platforms, and can answer just about anything you want to know.

Curious how good of quality the live sports are.... HD quality? Hit and miss?

Also, is there a reason to get the FireTV over the Stick?

[Fish]

Originally Posted by epitome1170

Curious how good of quality the live sports are.... HD quality? Hit and miss?

Also, is there a reason to get the FireTV over the Stick?

Quality varies. Last year NFL streams were very good. HD quality or close. With bandwidth constantly increasing these days, streaming is getting better quality all the time. Sports streaming in general has improved quite a bit over the past 2 years.

I would highly recommend the FireTV box over the Stick. The hardware differences are pretty considerable. The Stick can be overwhelmed with some HD streaming codecs, that can cause choppy playback. It also doesn't have enough RAM/storage to properly cache enough video for smooth playback allowing you to pause playback without needing to restart the stream. The box will play pretty much everything.

[SuperChief]

Originally Posted by Fish

Quality varies. Last year NFL streams were very good. HD quality or close. With bandwidth constantly increasing these days, streaming is getting better quality all the time. Sports streaming in general has improved quite a bit over the past 2 years.

I would highly recommend the FireTV box over the Stick. The hardware differences are pretty considerable. The Stick can be overwhelmed with some HD streaming codecs, that can cause choppy playback. It also doesn't have enough RAM/storage to properly cache enough video for smooth playback allowing you to pause playback without needing to restart the stream. The box will play pretty much everything.

Fish - any recommendations on where to start with sideloading Kodi? If you recall, I did this awhile back, but I sort of fell off for a bit and am now going to have to completely restart. Is TVMC still a thing?

[Fish]

Originally Posted by SuperChief

Fish - any recommendations on where to start with sideloading Kodi? If you recall, I did this awhile back, but I sort of fell off for a bit and am now going to have to completely restart. Is TVMC still a thing?

There's multiple methods of getting apps to your FireTV. I'd highly recommend the adbLink(formerly adbFire) method:

https://www.tvaddons.ag/install-kodi-amazon-fire-tv/

TVMC is no longer a thing. Technically it still exists, but they abandoned Android support at v14.2. It's been replaced with what's called FreeTelly, but they don't have an Android version and don't plan on developing one. Getting it on the Google Play store turned out to be too much of a hassle, so they bailed.

Once Kodi is installed, then add the tvaddon.ag Fusion source, per instructions here: https://www.tvaddons.ag/fusion-installer-kodi/

Then install the Addon Installer, per instructions here: https://www.tvaddons.ag/addon-installer-kodi/

Then you can run the Addon Installer(FYI it's a program addon as opposed to a video addon), and install any/all addons you want that way. It will install any necessary dependencies and such. The Featured section has pretty much everything you need to get started.

That may look a little confusing, but there's step by step instructions for all of it. Let me know if you have questions.