Review of Amazon Fire TV Stick & other Smart Dongles – Movies, Streaming, XBMC, KODI, Netflix

This is a review of Amazon Fire TV. I compare it to other TV players and discuss what is missing from the current selection of products.
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Yesterday, I turned on my TV to find that my Android TV dongle (Klastor Android TV-PC Dual Core – Rockchip RK3066) had frozen on the boot loader screen. I’m used to it crashing every so often, it’s an acceptable flaw for an otherwise highly useful and cheap device. However, this time was different. I unplugged the USB power, and plugged it in again, but the problem persisted. The next day, I tried to flash the ROM (which I’d done previously to get Netflix to work properly), but I couldn’t. I shorted pins 6-7 to force the device into flashable mode, but could only erase and not reflash. After 18 months, my beloved dongle is bricked.

I’d dreaded this moment for months. Casually surveying the current market of TV dongles revealed a depressing truth: My £30 dongle was irreplaceable. There are a number of features that it offers that are just not catered for by other products. I’d previously tried to upgrade my dual core dongle to a quad core one and given up after “upgrading” to lagging audio lagging and inferior wifi.

So what is missing from the devices available currently?

USB Connectivity – I have a wireless keyboard/mouse that I prefer to use instead of a remote control. Mostly because of the ease of typing. Many devices do not have a USB port. This rules out the Apple TV for me.

1080p – I watch Netflix and I want to watch it in HD. Allegedly my dongle wasn’t HD, but after flashing it the videos looked like 1080p to me. Services like Sky’s NOWTV are not full HD.

Netflix – Another limitation of NOWTV is that there isn’t a Netflix app for it.

4OD (All4), ITV Player – This was a problem for my dongle too, and the most frustrating of all. It’s sad that all the corporate greed/licensing issues mean that it’s not possible to buy a device that includes these services AND Netflix. NOWTV does have apps for 4OD and ITV, and indeed I own a NOWTV box for this purpose. But WHY ONLY NOWTV!?

Why not screen cast / mirror from your phone or tablet? Well, that’s just not how I want to control my smart TV. Sorry!

The best compromise I could find was the Amazon Fire TV box. It’s quite expensive, at nearly £80. But it is 1080p, it has Netflix, YouTube, you can sort of install apps, it has a USB port, and you can install XBMC (Kodi) for streaming movies from your own server (in my case, a drive attached to an Apple Airport Extreme).

Plus points:

-1080p and the picture quality is excellent
-Wifi works flawlessly
-Netflix, YouTube & Spotify
-Kodi. You can stream your music and videos from a drive on your server.
-USB port for peripherals or USB3.0 thumb drives
-All of the MP3s/CDs purchased from Amazon appear automatically under the Music tab.

Bad points:

-Installing Android apps is done (non-standardly) via a process known as sideloading. It is easy, but it is clumsy and not built into the interface. Accessing the apps you’ve installed is a hassle too. Not all Android apps will work, but I’ve added Firefox and Kodi without any trouble. I cannot get alternative versions of YouTube to work, in order to regain the ability to type.
-It doesn’t have Firefox or web browsing as standard? Why?
-Unlike my Android dongle, it is a not a “touch screen” device. This means that the cursor works in some apps but not others. It doesn’t work on the home screen for instance.
-You cannot use a wireless keyboard to search using the YouTube app. You have to type each letter out individually. I will screencast from my iPhone to avoid this soul destroying problem.
-No volume control. I’m quickly getting used to using my TV’s remote, but it’s a pain in the arse.
-The “cool” voice search function is like talking to an Amazon obsessed robot who denies the existence of other streaming services. It will only search Amazon Instant Video for films.

It’s a small thing, but why is the power cable so short and why doesn’t it come with an HDMI cable?
On balance, Amazon Fire TV is the best of a limited bunch. It also looks pretty cool, like it belongs in 2001: A Space Odyssey. But whilst I do recommend Amazon Fire TV, it has its quirks. Maybe one day there will be a dongle that does everything that it should do…