Amazon FireTV Stick announced

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Raising hand here. As long as I could get my local baseball broadcasts, I'd happily ditch everything else.

The MLB TV service works fine for me: every game for every team, with a choice of home or visitor broadcast. Not cheap but I do likey my baseball. Don't watch much else during sports season.

[wizwor]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The MLB TV service works fine for me: every game for every team, with a choice of home or visitor broadcast. Not cheap but I do likey my baseball. Don't watch much else during sports season.

Aren't local games blacked out?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by wizwor

Aren't local games blacked out?

Depends on your location.
Not where I am.

(And they're only blacked out during the local broadcast. I'm pretty sure day games, late night, or early night games get through fine even in blackout areas.)

All commercial-free, too. No ambulance chaser ads!

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The MLB TV service works fine for me: every game for every team, with a choice of home or visitor broadcast. Not cheap but I do likey my baseball. Don't watch much else during sports season.

Local teams are enough for me. My interest is much more casual that it used to be back in the day--before interleague play and steroids.

[fjtorres]

FireTV stick headed for Germany and the UK:

http://www.aftvnews.com/amazon-fire-...ny-and-the-uk/

German tech blogger Arne Hess is reporting that the Fire TV Stick he has been using in Germany, which he imported from the United States, has begun displaying content from Amazon’s German website. Previously, using a Fire TV Stick with a non-American Amazon account would not allow access to Amazon’s video library. Hess says that changed this week and he can now browse and play content from Amazon’s German video library. He also says German specific apps are now present within the Fire TV Stick’s appstore, but trying to install them results in a message about using an incompatible device.

I'm still waiting for Audible or Kindle for FireTV.

[fjtorres]

Still no Audible or Kindle, but you can get the Fire TV stick for "free" with a three month subscription to SlingTV:

http://www.cnet.com/news/sling-tv-of...f-price-boxes/

[wizwor]

Fire TV Stick for free or $50 off a Fire TV. Also noteworthy that AMC will be added to the basic sling tv programming package. AMC, BBC AMERICA, BBC World News, IFC, SundanceTV and WE tv are included.

Happy streaming!

[wizwor]

They have added Roku discounts to the deal as well...

https://www.sling.com/devices/offers

[QuantumIguana]

I may pick up Sling TV this fall for football season. I'd cancel it after the season was over.

[DiapDealer]

I may try Sling. Not crazy about the streaming to one device at a time limitation, though. What's that about?

[wizwor]

it's about money. from day one, premium providers have wanted to charge by the television set. that's why you need to rent a box for each television. This service will appeal to single people or people who are supplementing broadcast television, but will make less sense for large families.

If you want to pay less for television, put up an antenna.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by wizwor

If you want to pay less for television, put up an antenna.

Well I have, of course. It just doesn't help for those channels (usually included with basic cable/satellite) that don't broadcast.

I understand it's about money. Perhaps I should have asked why they're the only (that I know about) premium streaming service who feels they can get away with charging a per/stream price. I doubt they're strictly geared toward single people when they offer a children's programming supplemental subscription. Surely it wouldn't be that unusual for the parents of those children to want to watch something at the same time?

Could a household go about adding a second Sling TV stream if they wanted? Are there any options other than creating a second account?

[wizwor]

It's not a product for everyone. Most of the people going gaga over this are people who keep cable primarily for sports. I'm not sure it makes sense for a single set household, since you can get a single set installation of dish for just a little more, but people with Roku type devices can add sports and other programming to one set at a time.

I'm not advocating for this -- it's not a good fit for me.

[GA Russell]

I have found a book which may be of some help to some here.

Amazon Fire TV Stick User Guide - $2.99
http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Fire-St...dp/B00QVOGDFK/

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Still no Audible or Kindle, but you can get the Fire TV stick for "free" with a three month subscription to SlingTV:

http://www.cnet.com/news/sling-tv-of...f-price-boxes/

I have an app for FireTV stick called 'AirPin(PRO)'. It supports AirPlay video/photo streaming, AirTunes audio streaming, AirPlay Mirroring, and DLNA/UPnP media streaming.

So I can in fact mirror my iPad's screen to FireTV Stick and read my Kindle books on the TV (including with Immersion Reading audio). Audible plays through just fine (using either AirPlay or AirTunes, though neither gives you much to look at). There is a several second delay to mirror at full HD, and there's an aspect mis-match between iPad's 4:3 vs HDTV 16:9, however.

In theory, mirroring should work as well with AirPlay clients running on MacOS or Windows. But my Macbook Pro is too old to be supported directly, so I'd need to try some other software.

FireHDX supports 'screen mirroring' with FireTV, so you should be able to use that to read Kindle books on your TV (or play audible or music, I should think).

Sadly, my FireHD6 does not support that feature (it requires a bit more CPU).

An Audible streaming app would only be possible if Audible's infrastructure supported streaming (which it currently does not).

A Kindle app is probably technically possible. If there was a FireTV web browser, they'd be more than halfway there (via Kindle Cloud Reader).