805
people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #15,610 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★☆☆☆
A good initial release. But fails on the promise
As background I own several Apple TVs, Roku 3's and Chromecasts. Along with plenty of other devices. I also have a large investment in BluRay and DVD, having had over 5,000 films during my peak of building out a Home Theater. With that comes a substantial UV (Vudu & Flixster) and Digital Copy library (iTunes).
Initial usage of the Fire TV has shown me that this box is fast and flexible. The voice search is excellent. BUT for some reason the search only picks up Amazon content. It does NOT currently show available media on Flixster or Netflix. This is for something that was touted as an open ecosystem, and not a proprietary one. Well then, how do I access my existing library?
Worse, but along with the previous point easily fixable is the fact that my only access to my UV library is through Flixster. Flixster works great on a tablet. But for some reason the Fire TV is not properly caching the content of my movies, so everytime I launch the app it takes minutes to show the content. Further all recent films are NOT available in HD. This is a huge hole in the openness and functionality of the Fire TV.
I can't search on my content.
I can't watch much of my content in HD.
Easy fixes, but a hard sale for someone who owns a Roku or Apple TV.
Fire TV needs VuDu as an app, and access to the iTunes library that folks own to be truly open. I'm vested in UV, and Amazon should take note of that as folks like me are typically the leading edge. UV has matured, and Amazon needs to be a much better partner.
UPDATE 4/3/2014 I talked to Amazon.com and they confirmed that NetFlix chose to not enable the search functionality, thus the Fire TV search does not bring up NetFlix content. The same appears true for Flixster, and they confirmed that Fire TV is not currently a supported HD devices for Flixster content. All fixable, but ultimately making the Fire TV currently a closed eco systems with no real access to UV or other parties digital content that customers may already own. It's a tough pill to call up a search for content you own, and only be presented with purchase options from Amazon.
