New Amazon Fire TV announced

Just noticed on top of all the other problems, no microSD and no USB for storage or controllers and less supported media files types.
 
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I've got the Gen2 FireTv 4k, is it worth moaning at Amazon as I only brought in less than a month ago. Based on some comments here, its not as good?
 
jaket said:
I've got the Gen2 FireTv 4k, is it worth moaning at Amazon as I only brought in less than a month ago. Based on some comments here, its not as good?
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Apart from lack of HDR support the Gen2 Fire TV is far better. I would take a Gen 2 any time over Gen3.
 
Pottsey said:
no microSD and no USB for storage or controllers and less supported media files types
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they do suggest here that, like stick predecessors, an OTG usb hub will be viable,
However with smart tv's (pan anyway) you have usb/dnla and, for me, the tv decoders, make a better job for media upscale/deinterlace and noise reduction.

As you said, asthetic with the stub hdmi cable is poor.


I assume there is still not Nowtv.
 
Nope, no NowTV and virtually zero chance of it ever happening, they see themselves as rivals with Sky so neither side will support the others ecosystem.

From the Amazon developer site it looks the Ethernet adapter is only 10/100 which in 2017 is ridiculous. There are also growing rumours that FireOS 6 is locking away a lot of the Android 7.1 APIs, thus making things a lot tougher for third party guys like the Kodi team, Koying of SPMC and MrMC. A lot of the rumours could possibly be scare mongering from some self styled "Experts" though, that more often than not have their own warped agendas. It would seem silly if Amazon completely blocked side loading as they full well know that a good number of their hardware sales come from people "adapting" the Fire TV and the more sales they make the more people they have in their ecosystem over Google's and Apple's.
 
Pottsey said:
That would have been the very reason I was going to buy it but having HDR support is useless when the unit is so badly designed I cannot even plug it in and use it on my display. That silly little cable is enough to stop me buying it :(
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You can get an extension cable for £2 hardly seems like a reason not to buy to me!
 
a1ex2001 said:
You can get an extension cable for £2 hardly seems like a reason not to buy to me!
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Its not just one extension more like 4 or 5 extension/adapters just to get the thing to work as well as the Gen 2 unit. Even after all that can it even run all the apps and games with the weaker hardware and less API and Codex support? Having to have all these adapters bumps up the cost and hardly makes it simple, fast and fluid to use.
 
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Pottsey said:
Its not just one extension more like 4 or 5 extension/adapters just to get the thing to work as well as the Gen 2 unit. Even after all that can it even run all the apps and games with the weaker hardware and less API and Codex support? Having to have all these adapters bumps up the cost and hardly makes it simple, fast and fluid to use.
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Bit of an over exaggeration ;)

The s905/Mali combination series of SoCs are well proven and more than capable of playing 4K HDR material with room to spare, they have only cut support in hardware for older legacy formats that I can't ever remember using. Amazon (like NVidia with their remote only SKU) seem to be moving away from the ideas that people will be using the boxes for gaming and are just using them for streaming services hence the theoretical reduction in hardware spec (counter that by a much more stable and understood SoC). The biggest unknown is what OS6/Android 7.1 is going to bring to the Fire and what restrictions Amazon will try to force on devs.
 
TheMightyTen said:
Bit of an over exaggeration ;)

The s905/Mali combination series of SoCs are well proven and more than capable of playing 4K HDR material with room to spare, they have only cut support in hardware for older legacy formats that I can't ever remember using. Amazon (like NVidia with their remote only SKU) seem to be moving away from the ideas that people will be using the boxes for gaming and are just using them for streaming services hence the theoretical reduction in hardware spec (counter that by a much more stable and understood SoC). The biggest unknown is what OS6/Android 7.1 is going to bring to the Fire and what restrictions Amazon will try to force on devs.
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An exaggeration? I need an adapter to get HDMI video out, another adapter to get sound out, another adapter to get wired network, another adapter or two for the game controller and storage. Assuming it can even run the games with the weaker GPU. Even after all those adapters I still end up with the loss of the microSD.
 
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Pottsey said:
An exaggeration? I need an adapter to get HDMI video out, another adapter to get sound out, another adapter to get wired network, another adapter or two for the game controller and storage. Assuming it can even run the games with the weaker GPU. Even after all those adapters I still end up with the loss of the microSD.
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It's not a replacement for the gen 2 fire tv, essentially this is just a more powerful version of the fire stick.

The fire tv replacement is coming later.
 
Pottsey said:
An exaggeration? I need an adapter to get HDMI video out, another adapter to get sound out, another adapter to get wired network, another adapter or two for the game controller and storage. Assuming it can even run the games with the weaker GPU. Even after all those adapters I still end up with the loss of the microSD.
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But you are comparing Oranges to Apples ;)
 
Out of interest what are the gaming services/apps that are now available unqiuely on the Amazon tv/stick boxes that justify having more powerful hardware,
are those services not now moving to either phones or dedictaed games machines eg Xbox or PC's ?

TheMightyTen said:
Nope, no NowTV and virtually zero chance of it ever happening, they see themselves as rivals with Sky so neither side will support the others ecosystem.
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seems shortsighted
so Roku(usa), and the more expensive shield, are the only independants, with appropriate DRM for all 4K service access.
If you need a 4k service though, it is probably already built into your 4k tv. (Roku's are now being built into some tv's too in usa);
I remain disappointed that for better PQ, those boxes will not downscale the 4K stream for a 1080p tv.

EDIT : NEW ROKU ANNOUNCED
may not have games, but if the Streaming Stick+ 4khdr/60hz reaches our shores at £52, amazon will be crying, got a decent cord too
 
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TheMightyTen said:
But you are comparing Oranges to Apples ;)
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MonkeyMan said:
It's not a replacement for the gen 2 fire tv, essentially this is just a more powerful version of the fire stick.

The fire tv replacement is coming later.
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I don't see how I am comparing Oranges to Apples as this is the replacement for the current Fire TV. That’s why the current TV was discontinued to be replaced by this new unit which is also the same price bracket as the gen 2 unit. The amazon development pages also class it as a Fire TV gen 3 unit.

The cube that is coming later is not a replacement for the fire TV gen 2, it’s a new high end device that is a hybrid built around the Echo device and expected to be double to triple of the price of Fire TV gen 2.
 
Pottsey said:
I don't see how I am comparing Oranges to Apples as this is the replacement for the current Fire TV. That’s why the current TV was discontinued to be replaced by this new unit which is also the same price bracket as the gen 2 unit. The amazon development pages also class it as a Fire TV gen 3 unit.

The cube that is coming later is not a replacement for the fire TV gen 2, it’s a new high end device that is a hybrid built around the Echo device and expected to be double to triple of the price of Fire TV gen 2.
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So they are rescaling their pricing (not really a surprise considering the tanking of the £ and the costs of running a streaming service) this Fire TV is not the direct replacement for the Gen 2, when the current Fire Stick Gen 2s run out there will be no more manufactured. This unit is the tier 2 one and equivalent to the stick, the old Gen 2 was the tier 1 but that tier has been price rescaled and will be replaced by the cube. I suspect they haven't done it to upset you personally so there is no real point being overly dramatic about it. :p ;)
 
Well after reading a few more things that some devs are saying about rumours they are hearing I've cancelled my pre-order in favour of a wait and see. Instead I've just ordered myself a Vero 4K to play around with, it's a mighty little box with one hell of a range of format support, including HDR and HD Audio (with working refresh, resolution and colorspace switching) plus a great support community (not surprising since it's almost an offshoot of the Raspberry Pi one ;)) :D, it's a while since I've dug under the hood of OSMC. Will keep my Shield for Netflix and Amazon retro gaming and game streaming and probably transfer all of my Kodi/Plex usage over to the Vero if it turns out to be as good as many are saying.

Getting the Vero does confirm my thoughts that there is no true "One Box" solution though :(
 
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jpaul said:
(forgot to ask) Did you consider Rok64
based system, this seems to have resolved performance issues of older pi's giving hevc+hdmi2.0, and given pi peripherals such as nice dac's can be a good & good-value playing system.
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I keep meaning to get one to play around with but I what I liked about the Vero 4K is the community support and I have to say I am blown away by it's performance so far, everything I have thrown at it has played correctly, at the correct resolution, the right Colour space and with the proper refresh rate. It's not cheap but it works so well :)
 
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