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I've had a Chromecast since the device was launched and mirroring was really the one thing I wished that device did. I find that streaming from my phone or tablet to be slow on that, overall, so I was intrigued with the Amazon Fire TV launched and Koush was able to get mirroring to work with very little latency. He praised the Fire TV for being having better streaming quality and capabilities than Chromecast, Roku, or Apple TV, when streaming media from Android devices.
I then saw the YouTube video him using the mirroring features from the app AllCast on his Amazon TV and it looked flawless. He advertised that mirroring was available via the app, but I haven't actually run across anyone that has been able to get this to work using his apps. On top of that, I've had problems with my phone (HTC One) or tablet (Nexus 7 1st Gen) recognizing my Fire TV when connected through my Comcast router. It seems to work via my Amped Wireless Router, but not Comcast, for whatever reason.
Next, streaming seems very poor overall. buffering times are no better than what I was getting with my Chromecast using the AllCast app.
Has anyone had better luck with AllCast and their Fire TV? Has anyone gotten mirroring to work? If so, how?
I've been posting on the Google+ page here and have not had any luck.
https://plus.google.com/110558071969009568835/posts/cbwdhJvg2vk
dmm5157 said:
I've had a Chromecast since the device was launched and mirroring was really the one thing I wished that device did. I find that streaming from my phone or tablet to be slow on that, overall, so I was intrigued with the Amazon Fire TV launched and Koush was able to get mirroring to work with very little latency. He praised the Fire TV for being having better streaming quality and capabilities than Chromecast, Roku, or Apple TV, when streaming media from Android devices.
I then saw the YouTube video him using the mirroring features from the app AllCast on his Amazon TV and it looked flawless. He advertised that mirroring was available via the app, but I haven't actually run across anyone that has been able to get this to work using his apps. On top of that, I've had problems with my phone (HTC One) or tablet (Nexus 7 1st Gen) recognizing my Fire TV when connected through my Comcast router. It seems to work via my Amped Wireless Router, but not Comcast, for whatever reason.
Next, streaming seems very poor overall. buffering times are no better than what I was getting with my Chromecast using the AllCast app.
Has anyone had better luck with AllCast and their Fire TV? Has anyone gotten mirroring to work? If so, how?
I've been posting on the Google+ page here and have not had any luck.
https://plus.google.com/110558071969009568835/posts/cbwdhJvg2vk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For me it worked right at least sending videos and photos, the connection between my nexus 5 and FTV was quick, but I didn't try the mirror. I'm using for router an asus rt-ac66u and is coneccted wired.
It doesn't work very well for higher quality/HD video streaming - buffer and lag issues. It is good for photos and whatnot though. Using my S4 and the Fire.
2fastkuztoms said:
For me it worked right at least sending videos and photos, the connection between my nexus 5 and FTV was quick, but I didn't try the mirror. I'm using for router an asus rt-ac66u and is coneccted wired.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had some major issues when I first got it. Was visiting my in-laws this weekend and bought the Amazon Fire TV to be able to share pictures and videos of our baby with family. I spent 2 hours trying to get my AllCast to recognize the Amazon Fire TV and Allcast app on the device, no luck. didn't work with my Nexus 7 as well. I ended up resorting to uploading my pictures to Amazon Cloud Drive and showed the pictures/vidoes that way. The buffering time was horrible for videos, though.
When we finally got home Sunday night, I tried it on our TV and noticed I had the same issue when connecting to my Comcast router (same one my MIL has at her house). Luckily I have a separate router I use as a Wifi extender, so was able to get it to recognize my Fire TV with that connection.
Overall, I haven't been very impressed with the Fire TV, as compared to my Roku, Chromecast, or my dad's Apple TV. The one "must have" feature I wanted that this one seemed to have, as well as the apps and other features, was mirroring Android. If I'm not able to get that to work similar to how Koush was able to in his YouTube video, I'll probably pack it up and take it back to Best Buy for a return. Bummer, because it is a nice device, just already have too many other devices that do the same thing.
The AllCast app is finally available on Amazon Appstore (with the optional premium in app purchase) to work with AllCast for Fire TV app. Finally I can use my Amazon coins for something other than games!
AllCast and Amazon's version of Youtube have the ability to cast from Android devices to the Fire TV, just like Chromecast. They work great!
I have an Amazon Fire TV imported from the US,,, Is it possible to use my UK Prime Instant Video account? I can link it up to my UK account (the apps seems to reflect this) but I seem to be seing US Movie/TV content. Also no way to set timezone to UK.
Any views?
(sorry m8 I'd never noticed the default list of TZs was so dang restricted...)
ipxsystems said:
I have an Amazon Fire TV imported from the US,,, Is it possible to use my UK Prime Instant Video account? I can link it up to my UK account (the apps seems to reflect this) but I seem to be seing US Movie/TV content. Also no way to set timezone to UK.
Any views?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi buddy i'm in the same boat as you.... If you figure out how to change the time let me know.
imtiajmeah said:
Hi buddy i'm in the same boat as you.... If you figure out how to change the time let me know.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In the Netherlands, got this problem as well. Opened the Amazon settings apk, and those few time zones are hardcoded in the app/xml, so looks that amazon doesn't have any outside US plans for now.
Sideloaded a default Android Setting apk, but switching time zones didn't stick, same as via adb shell setprop persist.sys.timezone, so think we'll need to wait for root access to make it stick.
I installed "Time Zone Changer" from the playstore, worked for me, +2 GMT, even after reboot.
ipxsystems said:
I have an Amazon Fire TV imported from the US,,, Is it possible to use my UK Prime Instant Video account? I can link it up to my UK account (the apps seems to reflect this) but I seem to be seing US Movie/TV content. Also no way to set timezone to UK.
Any views?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi there,
So are you saying that you have an amazon.co.uk account, but the Fire TV prime movies on your box are the USA movies? (I think that means you get about 2x as many choices AFAIK... which is fantastic. So is that true?
Also, how about NetFlix, is that UK or USA content?
tx
Mark.
..
JJ-KwiK said:
Everything on the FireTV is region restricted to the US. Including Prime, Netflix and Hulu. If you try from any other region, like UK or Canada as an example, you'll get an error msg when you try to load a video. The only way to get around the error is to use a VPN. So far, vpn apk's, like Hola, don't work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Holy crap, so why are some people buying it in the UK on eBay... Some sellers saying it's UK ready...
Perhaps we'll get lucky with an Android TV announcement at Google IO.
Mark
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
Here is my experience so far...
If you use a service like SmartDNS or Unblock-US, you can watch Netflix from anywhere in the world using your UK Netflix account. No need for VPNs. The services costs an extra $5 a month but worth it. Works great on all devices, including my Fire TV.
The service also works a treat for Hulu, but the Fire TV app is for Hulu. This needs a US credit card to subscribe.
For Amazon Instant Video (the pay to rent/buy service), you need a US Amazon.com account and a US credit card. You can use a service like US Unlocked (not to be confused with Unblock-US mentioned above ) which lets you register for a virtual US credit card with a US billing address and works great on Amazon and Vudu. Been using it a few years, but it does require a huge leap of faith to sign up for it - you need to send bank details etc for initial setup. I haven't had any issues so far, but appreciate many won't want to do this.
You can probably also get Amazon.com vouchers but have not tried this for Instant Video . Lots of sites sell them
The kick in the teeth for me is Amazon Prime and not having access to the UK service. On the Fire TV it's not an app that you launch so to speak, it's integrated into the menus. Everything that is served is the US content. Unlike Netflix, which uses the same app to server different content based on your region, Amazon has different apps for each region.
So to get UK Prime content, we need a UK version of the app sideloaded. At least that's my conclusion. The best version would be the Google TV apk (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.avod) and there are some discussion around about ripping it, but I don't think anyone succeeded. We would also need it to be the UK version of the app.
As an example, on PS3, to get UK Prime, I need the app from the US PSN store, and for US Prime you need the one from the US PSN store.
The other challenge is sideloading it. I tried sideloading this Amazon Instant APK just as a test, and I got an error saying com.amazon.avod already installed, which is the main Prime app on the Fire TV. Someone much smarter than me would need to figure out how to change the name of the app/package so it can be installed alongside each other. Even if you could, this app won't work anyway to get UK content (or even work at all with a remote), but it's one step closer if we can get two versions of the Amazon app installed side by side.
Hope that helps someone somewhere It's still a great piece of kit - only thing I'm missing is UK Prime.
Cheers
eskay993 said:
Here is my experience so far...
If you use a service like SmartDNS or Unblock-US, you can watch Netflix from anywhere in the world using your UK Netflix account. No need for VPNs. The services costs an extra $5 a month but worth it. Works great on all devices, including my Fire TV.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does Netflix UK work for you? Mine (also using Unblock Us) does show the content, and can navigate, but will refuse to play movies. It will start loading but then stalls after about 40% loading.
adb logcat gives java cert errors.
JPDeckers said:
Does Netflix UK work for you? Mine (also using Unblock Us) does show the content, and can navigate, but will refuse to play movies. It will start loading but then stalls after about 40% loading.
adb logcat gives java cert errors.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm you're right. I've been mostly watching US and only tested accessing UK content, not playing. Tried playing and it stalls at 40%.
As a test, I tried a different Netflix apk that I found and it works fine in terms of playing the movie, but this apk is designed for touchscreen and a bit crappy to use with the Fire TV remote.
So, either it's a bug with v1.0.1 of Netflix which comes with the Fire TV, or it' an extra region check they've added, which sucks. I suspect it's just a bug/restriction of this old version.
If we can find a version Netflix apk that works well with a remote, then this would be solved. Unfortunately most results that come up are for touch screens.
Sooo close to being the perfect box! Hopefully someone can figure out a way round it.
Cheers
UPDATE: Netflix UK now works for me as I mention below.
Unfortunately I haven't found a way around this. I am in the UK and bought a Fire TV whilst in the US. When returning none of the videos play, none of the applications load (apart from the ones I've sideloaded).
It is still useful, as I put XBMC on there but it would be great to be able to use an Amazon Prime UK account or even just set the timezone without faffing about.
boxst said:
Unfortunately I haven't found a way around this. I am in the UK and bought a Fire TV whilst in the US. When returning none of the videos play, none of the applications load (apart from the ones I've sideloaded).
It is still useful, as I put XBMC on there but it would be great to be able to use an Amazon Prime UK account or even just set the timezone without faffing about.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Plex works i use it everyday on fire tv,even with the things that dont work yet in the uk for the price and gta games working great it is a brilliant box.
JPDeckers said:
Does Netflix UK work for you? Mine (also using Unblock Us) does show the content, and can navigate, but will refuse to play movies. It will start loading but then stalls after about 40% loading.
adb logcat gives java cert errors.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure if it's something I inadvertently did, or something that changed server side at Netflix/Amazon, but Netflix UK now works on my Fire TV! I tried US, Mexico and UK and all movies and TV shows play (no longer get stuck at 40%). Worth trying it again if you were having trouble before.
All that's left now is for the new Netflix client (coming soon later in the year) and for a way to get Amazon UK, and I'm sorted!
eskay993 said:
Not sure if it's something I inadvertently did, or something that changed server side at Netflix/Amazon, but Netflix UK now works on my Fire TV!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Indeed, somewhere around the last firmware update, Netflix started working! Uninstalled the sideloaded version, because this client is actually usable. Now wait for the updated one, but already really helps in usability.
Hi!
I want to know if the Amazon Fire TV works outside US without VPN.
Can I buy an US Amazon Fire TV to use Netflix in Belgium (because now it's available)?
Can I add some application from Google Play?
Of course, for using Google Play I will root the device.
Thanks !
Belegkarnil said:
Hi!
I want to know if the Amazon Fire TV works outside US without VPN.
Can I buy an US Amazon Fire TV to use Netflix in Belgium (because now it's available)?
Can I add some application from Google Play?
Of course, for using Google Play I will root the device.
Thanks !
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I live in the Netherlands. Yes, you can use the FTV outside the US. Except that all the &*#&@*&# Amazon services
like Prime etc. don't work unless your IP is in either Germany, US or UK. Same thing for e.g. Hulu+. I didn't try VPN
yet. On my Fritzbox DSL modem it's a bit of a pain to configure VPN.
AFAIK, Netflix works ok. I tried one movie I think when I got the FTV last week. I'm mostly using my AppleTV for
Netflix, because I find the interface much easier to navigate. On the FTV, Netflix is using the same interface as e.g.
on SmartTV (e.g. Philips) or the PS3/PS4.
Firmware updates also arrive from Amazon. This week I got the latest and now I can't root the FTV. That was not
so much of a deal, because my main purpose was a good (cheap) Android/ARM based box to use XBMC/Kodi.
I think via eBay I paid ~80 euros for it.
In XBMC, 1080p MKVs with DD+/TrueHD/DTS work provided you use Kodi 14.0 (still in alpha). Bitstreaming to an
external receiver is ok. You can easily sideload XBMC via adb.
You're limited to the Amazon appstore. I think it's possible to download a apk from Google Play, then sideload it. Only issue
is that it (probably) won't show up in the launcher/homescreen of the FTV, so you have to start the app via the settings
menu.
I got Amazon prime to work just using a smart DNS provider (didn't change my IP). it was a while ago so can't remember exactly how I did it. I have a valid US account/credit card and address. Think I had to enable 1-click to buy an episode or even to watch the trailers/free episodes.
Yes, Fire TV, the device itself, works outside of the US; but many of the streaming services will not (Hulu plus, Pandora, Beats Music ...) because of the complicated copyright laws. If all you want is to watch Netflix in Belgium, Fire TV purchased from US will work for you with no problem. If later you decide to go through the hassle of rooting your Fire TV, you may consider installing the VPN on it as well. That way, you will have access to more apps and services such as: Spotify, A&E etc.
Belegkarnil said:
Hi!
I want to know if the Amazon Fire TV works outside US without VPN.
Can I buy an US Amazon Fire TV to use Netflix in Belgium (because now it's available)?
Can I add some application from Google Play?
Of course, for using Google Play I will root the device.
Thanks !
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you all !
Not only Netflix but for the Amazon application yes. I plan to install some applications on Google Play to watch local channels.
Works well down under
Works very well, as mentioned.
Can side load apps.
Easy to set up a DNS to view the world as you may require.
Cheers
Hi guys, I just got a Fire TV Stick from Amazon.in, but I am facing an issue with prime video contents. I am getting US library in my Fire TV and I am from India.
So, when ever I am trying to stream I am getting a message We're unable to complete your request.... and there is only an OK button.
Only way I can stream is from the Prime Video android app with the option to play on Fire TV Stick.
All the other streaming apps working fine though. I used to stream contents from US and UK using Smart DNS on my PC, is it happening because of this??
And, also there is no active VPN or Smart DNS proxy on the router. Can anybody help me out with this?
Some countries like mine, Mexico, Just received Amazon Prime Video service a couple months back and with it they started selling what they called Fire TV basic, which is no other than a rebranded Fire stick V1, as far as i know. The problem is that it seems their Prime video on those countries, Mexico in my case but i believe is the same in any other country as far as i have read in the forums, doesnt work with any other Fire TV device but the basic they sell. I have a fire TV stick V1 and one V2 and I configure them on my Mexican Amazon Prime Video but every time I tried to start a video I get an error that this video is not configured to run in my country. I can see and play the video using their android app and a laptop.
I contacted my country amazon services and they told me that only the basic edition will run their service and that no other fire TV service will be able to do this. So they tell me to buy it instead than helping me with the devices I already have. The device they sell cost around 70 dlls even when is a simple Fire Stick that includes the old remote, not even the one with voice. I really find this weird they should care what device I use to see a service I am paying from but I guess they only cares about to make money.
I dont know if there will be any way to bypass whatever they are doing?
I had the same problem here in Brazil. My brother-in-law, who lives in the US, gifted me his old Fire Stick v1 when he came to visit us last month. As an Amazon Prime Video subscriber a I logged with my brazilian Amazon account. The device was added to my account without any problems. But when I turn it on, it still shows the US Prime Video on the main menu and I can't watch any movies or shows, even the ones that are available in Brazil.
Contacted the customer service and the guy (who was very nice and attentive) told me that the firmware on the brazilian Fire Stick (that is sold here too as Basic Edition ) is slightly different from the US device and this is why I can't use brazilian Prime Video with a US Fire Stick.
I find it amusing that Amazon makes it so hard to watch Prime Video, going to an opposite way they do with the Kindle device and service. Is easier to watch Netflix on the Amazon device, as I still can install apps and do everything else, than to watch Amazon's own service.
Because of this ability to install apps, I found a workaround using the native browser to access the Prime video web app. It's not the ideal solution and it's still annoying to see US content and ads on the main screen.
Iv no idea if this will work but you can try using a vpn but only the firestick v2 supports vpn apps - they will not work on the v1
TheFixItMan said:
Iv no idea if this will work but you can try using a vpn but only the firestick v2 supports vpn apps - they will not work on the v1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks but it is not a problem a VPN can fix. We want to actually access our local Amazon Prime library so no need for the VPN. I can access the USA library with my USA prime account, which I pay as well, for this the VPN works perfectly. Some how Amazon is blocking any other fire tv version but the basic they sell locally at an exorbitant price. You can access the local library using a browser, an android device, xbox or psp, but not an American fire tv, thats crazy.