Amazon FireTV Stick announced

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Thanks for the advice, chaps. Much appreciated.

Sounds as if my WD box isn't obsolete yet!

Not. Even. Close.

[leebase]

Mine was originally due Dec. 17th, and now I should have it Saturday.

[pidgeon92]

The nice thing about the stick vs. the box is the portability. Very easy to move from TV to TV, and to carry when traveling. I bought one specifically for my husband to take with him when he travels on business, which is almost every week.

[Shane R]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Thanks for the advice, chaps. Much appreciated.

Sounds as if my WD box isn't obsolete yet!

Yes, thanks. I nabbed a $20 Chromecast. Works beautifully with the apps on my phone and my browser, but we absolutely loathe not having a remote.

We're recent cord-cutters, and we'll look at the Fire Stick when it comes, especially with the hackability I just learned about, and we'll go with a Roku stick if the Fire one is a bust.

[DiapDealer]

I'm hoping for some firmware updates that improve stability. Prime streams fairly well for me, but Netflix and Hulu both stutter and pause, and Plex occasionally locks up completely mid-stream. I've got a newer Asus N Router that's not even breaking a sweat when streaming to multiple Rokus (2-3 at a time), and there's no interfering wifi nearby. The Fire Stick is a whopping 13 feet from the router, so I don't believe signal strength is the issue (not to mention Prime Video streaming as well as it does).

At $19, I'm not crying or anything, but if things don't improve with firmware/channel updates, this thing's not going to see a lot of use in my house. And if it's so router-hardware/placement sensitive, it's definitely not going to be the traveling companion I was hoping for.

[leebase]

I'm looking to the Firestick for travel...but there are a couple things to keep in mind:

1. Hotel wifi often is too slow for video streaming
2. It can be a bitch connecting any of these devices due to the "login to the wifi" nature of hotel wifi

Anybody experience streaming from a Mac or iPad/iPhone to the FireStick yet? I download content onto my devices when I travel because of the wifi scenarios above. It would still be nice to have the Firestick so that i'm not reduced to watching movies on my iPad/iPhone.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by leebase

I'm looking to the Firestick for travel...but there are a couple things to keep in mind:

1. Hotel wifi often is too slow for video streaming
2. It can be a bitch connecting any of these devices due to the "login to the wifi" nature of hotel wifi

Anybody experience streaming from a Mac or iPad/iPhone to the FireStick yet? I download content onto my devices when I travel because of the wifi scenarios above. It would still be nice to have the Firestick so that i'm not reduced to watching movies on my iPad/iPhone.

If the hotel WiFi is too slow to stream, you'd likely need to use your own device as a hotspot.
So you have the option of using your own data, which is sometimes cheaper than hotel fast WiFi.
Not sure how well the fire stick handles local media at all. Haven't tried.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by ApK

If the hotel WiFi is too slow to stream, you'd likely need to use your own device as a hotspot.
So you have the option of using your own data, which is sometimes cheaper than hotel fast WiFi.
Not sure how well the fire stick handles local media at all. Haven't tried.

Mobile data is extremely expensive to use for streaming movies. You can use up a typical monthly quota of data just watching one movie. For those who have unlimited data plans, they typically are disallowed from using the hotspot feature.

I've looked up the answers to my own questions. No local media on the Firestick. No current "Airplay" type feature for iOS devices. No support for Mac "AirPlay" either. Hopefully updates in the future can address all of these. So for the moment, my Firestick will live it's life as my "upstairs bedroom Netflix/Prime Video" wifi streamer.

Would love to see Apple enter the "streaming stick" market. Airplay on the go in a small device would be great. (I know...it's hilarious that the Apple Tv hockey puck is now a "big device".

[ApK]

Originally Posted by leebase

Mobile data is extremely expensive to use for streaming movies. You can use up a typical monthly quota of data just watching one movie.

When the hotel doesn't have or is too expensive for high speed Internet, we set our Netflix account to the lowest quality (.3GB per hour).

Admittedly, this is for when we're spending a few hours in the room one night on a weekend trip, not when you want a regular entertainment supply for a long business trip.

There are inexpensive dongles from lesser-know companies that are optimized for mobile device local streaming that might be worth looking into if local streaming with no other available high speed Internet is the primary use case.

[Sydney's Mom]

I am showing January 12-I would love it if I could get it in time to take it on vacation, but there is always next year. Our main TV is a smart tv, so I get Amazon Prime on there-probably HBO Go, to.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by leebase

I've looked up the answers to my own questions. No local media on the Firestick. No current "Airplay" type feature for iOS devices. No support for Mac "AirPlay" either. Hopefully updates in the future can address all of these. So for the moment, my Firestick will live it's life as my "upstairs bedroom Netflix/Prime Video" wifi streamer.

That's a bummer. Screen-casting from android devices is one of the things I've found that works reasonably well (even if getting it going is a bit awkward) with the Stick. So anything I can play on my tablet, I can view with the FireTV Stick. The screen casting built into the Plex apps actually works great (streaming from a Plex server to the Fire Stick is where I have intermittent problems). So local content that I've synced to my Nexus using the Plex app there, I can just Cast to the Plex app on the Stick. That part's pretty slick (and no awkward enabling of screen-mirroring on the Stick to get it "ready"). The Plex apps can also advertise as servers and stream content to each other, but that gets flaky under the best of conditions.

Not certain what casting capabilities the Plex app for iOS might or might not have.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by leebase

So for the moment, my Firestick will live it's life as my "upstairs bedroom Netflix/Prime Video" wifi streamer.

That's all my stick will be used for - Prime & Netflix. No plans to use it for anything else.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

That's all my stick will be used for - Prime & Netflix. No plans to use it for anything else.

Well worth the $19 price of admission for those of us that got it on sale.

It will take some time for the market to mature for these "sticks" to meet my travel requirements. Small size is great for traveling. But the sorry state of hotel wifi and the expense of mobile wifi means that "streaming video" is simply not a great on-the-road strategy.

I'll just watch movies on my iPad or my Mac. If I have room in my luggage, I can take the AppleTv and display those same movies onto the hotel Tv. But even THEN, I have to set my computer up as it's own wifi router to get past that "can't set up the box due to the need to log into the hotel wifi".

[leebase]

Interesting: http://www.appletvhacks.net/2014/09/.../#.VIOHbb5d194

Looks like there is now Peer to Peer Airplay that will come in handy for my hotel use case.

[Ripplinger]

I just checked my order this morning and it said the same, delivery date December 23rd. A short while ago I just got an email from Amazon saying it's shipped and it should be here Monday. So it looks like they don't always update the expected delivery dates.