Amazon Fire TV

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Amazon has their streaming box out, called the Fire TV.

As far as I can tell the only advantages it has over Roku are the optional game controller and the voice searching.  And I guess the faster CPU.

I'm not interested in the games but voice searching would be nice, entering search words with a remote is annoying.

No Vudu or HBOgo, so Roku wins there.

[Bob]

Roku, AppleTV and now Amazon.

All are gonna be great

I have the first two.......love them both

[MartyS (Gromit)]

If I didn't already have a Roku and AppleTV it would certainly be something I'd look at, I can already get all my Amazon video on the Roku.

If anything I hope it kicks the Roku people in the butt a little, get them to update and improve stuff a little faster.

I could see Amazon not wanting to add apps for companies like Vudu that also do rentals and purchases, since they are direct competitors.  Netflix is only a competitor with Prime, not the first run purchase and rental business.  So Roku should have an advantage for a while with those.

I didn't see a kindle app listed, or I missed it, reading books on the big screen might be a challenge, but anything with lots of pictures like magazines and comic books would be nice.

[AmandaGal]

I'm sure you guys have seen this ad for it (starring Gary Busey).  It's pretty great.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/04/02/amazons-first-ad-for-fire-tv-stars-gary-busey-and-boy-is-it-weird/

[MrTorso]

Roku has all the channels but the file formats that it will play are just terrible. only h.264?  NO DTS?, No AC3?

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Roku has all the channels but the file formats that it will play are just terrible. only h.264?  NO DTS?, No AC3?

It's also too slow if you have more than a handful of files on a drive, I tried plugging a hard drive into mine with lots of files and it took forever just to navigate the directory structure, it was like every time you went into a folder it would rescan the entire drive.

My router has a DLNA server so I wish Roku would make a DLNA app so I could connect to it, my TV can but the interface isn't as nice as the Roku.

[Bob]

Roku has all the channels but the file formats that it will play are just terrible. only h.264?  NO DTS?, No AC3?

Does that include the Roku3?  I have that one and I just have it plugged into the 1080p TV in my office.

[MrTorso]

Roku has all the channels but the file formats that it will play are just terrible. only h.264?  NO DTS?, No AC3?

Does that include the Roku3?  I have that one and I just have it plugged into the 1080p TV in my office.

If you are using the  USB port.  These are the only formats allowed via USB:

USB Media Formats
Video: MP4 (H.264), MKV (H.264)
Audio: AAC, MP3
Image: JPG, PNG

[Bob]

I just use the HDMI output from the Roku into the TV. 

I do not have DirecTV hooked up to it, so it is the local channels and the world of Netflix.  And since it is the office 32 inch plasma, that is all it needs