Top positive review
2,344 people found this helpful
Better than I thought… From a techie guy
By Man Parrish on Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2015
Better than I thought… From a techie guy... I'm a big geek… I have tons of boxes and electronic toys… I even have several Google TVs which are now outdated. I'm pretty blown away by this box, and the amount of "content apps" available. For instance the unknown "Pluto TV" app has over 100 HD streaming stations. Some of them obviously aren't great, but it's definitely enough to keep you busy. For hours on end. Some of the channels have an hour or two of programming and just loop over and over again, but there's enough content on other channels to keep you busy for days. If you're looking for the end all answer to cut your cable TV service, FireTv does not have things like live CNN, AMC and other cable stations (yet), but you could purchase a subscription for Sling TV (Google it) which has ala-carte live TV services. Something Apple is promising to deliver. If you have a current cable subscription, you can get things like HBO and Netflix streamed to your box if you are already paying for it in your home cable subscription. Your provider "passes through" the HBO, Netflix, etc programming through to this box. So for instants if you had an outdoor TV, TV in an attic or basement, you don't need to add another cable box to watch movies. . It has all the standard bells and whistles like Netflix, Hulu, and those sort of services . The box is fast, does what it's advertised. I have a Ultra HDTV. Although ultra high definition content is scarce these days, this box probably has the most ultra high definition content of any other unit. Granted a lot of those ultra high definition videos are of "Flyovers of nature" type videos. if you have Amazon prime, then you can stream several of their in-house shows in ultra high definition. They do have a large range of very popular movie theater type movies in ultra high definition, but there is no rental availability. And I doubt I'm going to spend $35 to watch Spiderman and ultra high definition. Just not worth it. If you're looking at this to be your end all box, it's pretty close. I'm curious to see what the AppleTV will have to offer, since I have multiple televisions in my household, I plan on having both systems right now . If your TV has a "smart hub feature" that contains all these built in apps, you may be doubling up on some of those popular ones like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu. I read the reviews on the Live Sling TV service, and they said they're still having a lot of problems with successful streaming, that it still there's quite a bit of buffering and videos just stopping for no reason. But sling TV does offer many stations live like cable for about $25 a month. If this is to be used with a second TV, like bedroom or living room, it's a nice supplement to have for your cable TV box, which you could probably drop down to basic service. Remember… This is all in its infancy. And it will take several years to shake out who the leader is. This is definitely "THE" top-of-the-line box right now. The price is cheap, and you will definitely spend hours, and hours sifting through many obscure and fun channels. UHD TV Note: If you have an ultra high definition television set and want to see content in 4K video, make sure that you check your TV manual or google your sets model number for info online. I have two Samsung 8500 TVs. It drove me crazy during set up, because I did not realize that only one of the four poorly marked inputs on my Samsungs could handle ultra high definition, 4K content thru HDMI. It's quite possible that your set will not handle any 4K content through HDMI, and that your tv only plays 4K content through its internal hub system or a special breakout box. Make sure you check that out first, if 4K is a critical feature for you ! You will also need a high-speed HDMI cable, that can carry the band width of 4K content. Your TV set will search for that band with to know that it's there. If you use a standard HDMI cable, even though you're running 4K content, your TV will not switch that feature on. One last critical thing… It would be best to run an ethernet cable from the back of that box, to your router. And then an HDMI 4K cable to the back of your television. If you're streaming bandwidth is not fast enough, or has lots of interference, your set or the box will downshift to standard high definition to deliver you smooth video. This box DOES deliver 4K video. It's up to you to make sure you have the bandwith, the inputs, and a television set that can handle this type of stream of data. The high definition picture on this is quite crisp and clear. And quite honestly, a lot of the 4K video, you probably won't notice much of a difference, and less you're a super geek LOL. Great box, definitely gworth the money. I forgot to mention, it has Amazon's "Alexa" built in… That is Amazon's version of Apple's Siri. Pick up the remote, ask it a question, the weather, pretty much anything, and chances are it will find it for you. I did ask it to find certain kinds of things and it had difficulty. It's a very simple system, pick up the remote, ask it a question, the weather, sports, news, pretty much anything, and chances are it will find it for you. I did ask it to find certain kinds of movies and it had difficult with it, but it did respond that it "wasn't available at this time" which seems to me that they are working to make it an even deeper search engine. This box is tiny… Enjoy!
Top critical review
5 people found this helpful
FIRST EVER HORRIBLE experience with Amazon support! AND STILL HORRIBLE for FIRE TV!!!
By SkipMkoy on Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2016
EDIT: 12/29/2016: So I contacted Amazon Fire again this past week and finally found a rep that was at least very helpful, resourceful, and also knowledgeable for a change. Went through the "many steps" concerning my Fire TV issues (yes of course, took a very long time, over 2 hours on the phone + also my Amazon device). This is Rolly. I wanted to send you a quick e-mail to let you know that I'm still researching the problem with the USB storage not showing on your Fire TV. It usually takes 3-5 business days for this sort of research, but in this case it's taking a little longer. I'm very sorry about this delay. Again, Rolly was much more informed & capable, however I've heard this before. Meaning that they will contact me soon or such. It's only been three (3) days since Rolly sent me this note so I guess I'll give them the extra couple of days. This doesn't however counteract the other times that the "engineers" were supposed to contact me back each other times I spoke with Amazon (sorry, Fire TV customer service - apparently they are different companies...). Too tired to go through my phone and find out exactly how much time I've spent on the phone, certainly more time than this Amazon Fire TV is worth!!!! But damnit I'm going to get this crappy device working and/or I'm going to make them pay for my time. If not for the last rep I would have just given up, but we'll see tell the truth. --> Changed my mind, started sorting through my Amazon calls.. Looks like close to 20 hours on the phone since Oct/Nov = is this worth it for you? Amazon in general is great for me. Fire TV = DON"T DO IT!!! EDIT: 12/16/2016: I still have not heard back from the Amazon "engineers" concerning my issue. But at least they did publish my review so I'll give Amazon a "thumbs up" because they still seem to be true concerning public/consumer reviews. Not going to change my rating of course because the "engineers" still have not contacted me. Still waiting... Just send me a replacement and/or solve the issue - don't care either way... EDIT 12/13/2016: I received the replacement unit quickly - was told it would be new but received a refurbished unit. My original unit did not detect USB drives at all. The refurb worked for a short time but then started giving me the error "USB error there was a problem mounting the inserted USB drive.....". A few times it has reported the drive mounted but when you check settings there is no USB storage available. After 4 hours 33 minutes 36 seconds (according to my call logs) my issue has still not been resolved. Also my guess is that I was on hold for 2/3 of this time (so I listened to the same crappy "classical" track over & over for like 3 hours - this alone is enough to piss anybody off BTW). I lost track of how many customer service agents I spoke with, and also how many times I was transferred. Calls were dropped 3 times (at least once though I did receive a call back). Not including the large amount of troubleshooting and research I performed on my own before contacting Amazon, I was asked to perform troubleshooting steps over & over by various agents, and was told repeatedly by many of these agents that the Fire TV doesn't support USB storage. Of course I informed them of their error explaining that I was looking at the Amazon specs in front of me. One agent told me (after doing some research) that the reason it wasn't working was that my USB "hard drives" - yes he kept calling them hard drives - weren't working because my USB drives weren't USB Type A devices!!! I tried explaining to him that the "Type A" referred to the USB plug itself (the shape being rectangular rather than square) and has nothing to do with this, but he seemed fairly adamant that his newfound research was solid. I could go on and on.... also received an email from one of the agents explaining the requirements to use the USB port (I explained this to almost every agent I spoke with) and asked if this resolved my issue - hah! I clicked on the "not solved" link which took me to a short Amazon review page where I gave them a big "ZERO". Immediately the page offered to have Amazon call me back - I assumed to discuss my experience. Guess what this got me? You guessed correctly! Back to where I had to start over discussing my issue again/put on hold/transferred/and my issue still unresolved. I have NEVER had a bad experience with Amazon support until now. Boy when it's bad it's REALLY BAD! They are supposedly sending my issue to some "engineers" to "analyze" or such my issue and get back to me. Oh, before I forget: some of the agents were surprised that I have the SAME issue with 2 different units. Both units have USB issues but they aren't the same. -- Some additional info: I formatted 12 USB drives (the same I mentioned previously) FAT32 (some using MiniTool Partition Wizard and some using Windows format) and took them to a buddy that has the same Fire TV (2nd Gen). ALL of them are recognized through his device (he also uses a hub, and a hard drive on his device). However we didn't use the hub for testing purposes as this could degrade/compromise any results. ---- PREVIOUS POST---- After finally delving into it I realized that the USB port doesn't work for me (PNY, SanDisk, USB2, USB3, 2GB, 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, etc, etc). Before anybody mentions USB debugging/etc I've already reset the unit many times, and I know how to work with android/etc devices. - ADB debugging OFF = if I turn this on it shows the option to turn on USB debugging ON/OFF. Always the option to turn ON unknown APPS - Doesn't make a difference at all concerning USB storage - microSD card works AOK Just got off the phone w/Amazon - they are sending me another unit so we'll see how this goes... For Amazon Prime I can see this as a great alternative to cable TV, however if they don't solve this issue (new unit) and the fact that they are WAY over-advertising bulls***, I don't plan to use this much myself. If you only use this for PRIME and perhaps NETFLIX or such, this can be a great unit. There's a lot of advertising + pushing, but again works great for PRIME stuff. I really like AMAZON but this is sometimes a real PITA. They are sending me a new unit (supposedly 1 day shipping, we'll see) so I do appreciate this. I do give them 99% on customer service in general however. If the hardware issues are solved then I will up my rating. After all of this my only real complaint (again if they solve the USB dealio) is the fact that Fire won't play more file formats. Amazon doesn't have as much content as I would like, but this isn't a factor for this device. It is actually solid - I decided to purchase the Fire TV over the Stick because of the extra ports + hardwired NIC + hardware advantage overall. I believe this was a good choice.
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