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No Way to Search or Browse Prime Movies Only = FAIL
I was really looking forward to using what was hyped as an amazing piece of entertainment equipment, but the actual experience falls short.
Pros:
+ User interface and underlying hardware is fast
+ Form factor of the device and remote control is very sleek
+ Plays games fairly well, especially for such a small box
+ Quality of Amazon videos is very good
+ Voice search works quite well
+ The device came pre-configured for my Amazon account. I just plugged it in, updated the software, and away I went
Cons:
- First and foremost, there is STILL no way to search for only free movies on Prime.
- Amazon touts it's 40,000 Prime movies available, but good luck finding them. There is no categorization by genre. You are stuck surfing through dumb lists of movies, or using the search function, which almost never returns any Prime movies
- Voice search works only on Amazon content. You cannot use this to search within Netflix, for example
- The Amazon FireTV box only comes with 8GB of memory for game and app storage, which is completely inadequate. There are games available for download that consume almost 2GB for ONE GAME. Good luck downloading a 1.76GB game, like the racing game featured in the list of top games.
Clearly, Amazon is marketing this device as a way to push its video content. In the help video that automatically plays the first time you use the device, it even offers you a 30 day Prime membership for free to try it out. However, Amazon has no incentive to help you actually search for and find this free content. It's clearly evident in the lack of ability to filter search results on free Prime content only. This is my biggest beef with Amazon, by far. I want a Netflix-like experience, where my Prime content is sorted by genre, and I can search for free movies only. Now, if you want to pay for video rentals, by all means buy this device, because it works really well. If you want it to access your Prime content only, stick to the Roku box you probably already have, because it works just as good.
UPDATE:
I called customer service, and talked to a guy about how I can search for and access my 40,000 Prime movies. Well....YOU CAN'T!!!! According to him, I can only find the Prime movies on the two lists on FireTV that say "Recently added to Prime" and "Top Prime Movies". Those lists are 73 items, and 150 items, respectively. THERE IS NO WAY TO SEARCH OR BROWSE FREE PRIME CONTENT ONLY. The guy I talked to said this was a very common request for people. OF COURSE IT IS. I don't want to pay for video rentals if I just paid for a Prime membership to access free content. AMAZON COMPLETELY FAILED. I AM RETURNING THE FIRE TV.
April 2014 · Electronics · verified purchase