Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The Fire TV came well packaged with extremely simple instructions. Plug in the power cable and HDMI cable (not included), put batteries in the remote and that's it. After initial start up there is an update that must be run, but after a few minutes the unit was up and running. Interface is nice looking and easy to use. Voice search worked perfectly...it understood this Kentucky accent instantly. Flipping through the movie choices is super fast (almost too fast since it has skipped a movie a time or two). Netflix is on the home page, but you have to install the app before using it the first time. As I'm typing this review the unit is displaying some beautiful screensaver pictures while I have a movie paused. If you store your photos on Amazon's Cloud you can use your own pictures instead. Picture quality is fantastic and movies start up lightning fast. The only thing I see as a con would be how the Prime movies are marked. The placement of the Prime marker in the upper left of the movie icon is very small and isn't as prominent as it should be making it rather difficult to tell whether it's Prime or a movie you would rent/purchase. I figure in the days and weeks ahead Amazon will be listening to customer suggestions (as they usually do) and more and more updates will be forthcoming making this device even better. For me the Amazon Fire TV is a winner. It will definitely be replacing a Directv receiver I was using. Update: After one full day of using Amazon's Fire TV I am more than satisfied with my purchase.If you read reviews like I do make sure to skip over the ones that don't have the Amazon Verified Purchase listed under their name or click that their post is unhelpful. These are people who are trying to review a product without even having it in their possession. If you discount those reviews (which make the overall rating less than it should be) you will discover that the majority of people who actually purchased this product are very satisfied. 4-6-14 Update: Added the AmazonBasics Digital Optical Audio Toslink Cable and this has added a whole new dimension to the sound quality of my tv. The sounds are more richer and louder than ever before. I am continually amazed at what this little device is capable of. I really suggest getting the cable I mentioned above to make your Fire TV experience even better!! 4-8-14 Update: Turned on the device today and went to start up Netflix...all I got was a white screen. Turned the unit off and on, but still a white screen. I uninstalled the Netflix app and reinstalled and it worked again. I don't believe it was a problem on the device itself, but rather the app since all of the other apps worked fine. 4-15-14 Update: Had the same white screen issue with Netflix some more. Contacted customer service and reported the issue. He stepped me through the process of going into the settings then the apps. When you come to Netflix instead of uninstalling click on force stop. This fixed the issue. If I have the problem again he asked that I contact them back immediately so that they can contact the developers with the issue. I continue to enjoy this device and have since gotten rid of the Directv receiver I had connected. I can't recommend the Fire TV enough!! 6-25-14 Update: My Fire TV is still going strong and I am completely happy with it. I have found that I watch TV more so on The Fire than my DirecTV. The one thing I haven't checked (but will sometime) is the USB port. I've got to save some movies to my flash drive and see if I can play a saved movie from the drive using the USB port on The Fire. Finding Amazon content is a breeze using the Voice Search and searching through movies or videos using Netflix and others is fine. Yes, it would be great to be able to use the Voice Search with everything else, but it's not a deal breaker for me nor an inconvenience. I would imagine Amazon will eventually include their Voice Search on any third party application as time allows. Even after using it all this time I'm still amazed at the sound and picture quality of such a tiny device. For me Amazon just gets better and better. 8-4-14 Update: I had movies saved to an external hard drive and I plugged it into the USB port on the Amazon Fire, unfortunately, it doesn't work. It basically did nothing. It made no noise like it was trying to access my hard drive nor did it recognize any USB plugged in. Hopefully Amazon will push out an update to fix this at some point and time. It would be a wonderful feature to have. (Hint, Hint...Amazon).