We all know you mean Amazon Fire.
Are you talking about the stick or fire TV - I still come from the hard wired school so sticks I don’t use.
Any ‘Stick’ makes a great cat toy.
I love my AFTV. Too bad the Plex app blows.
Roku 3 - $84.90: https://www.amazon.com/Roku-Streaming-Player-4230R-Search/dp/B00UJ3IULO (while supplies last).
I got a Roku 3 (4200) Refurb (maybe they didn’t like the color) a while back for $76 (may have been $67 - Dementia right around the corner). Best purchase I’ve made in a long time.
I think I’ve got similar issues with my streaming movies. Almost of mine are in MKV format. I am using a Vizio TV. and I often get buffering problems. I also have a samsung Blu-ray Player, and I use the plex app there. It seems to work WAY better with this thing.
Sometimes I use an Amazon Firestick, and that seems to work well too.
What I would really like - is one thing that works well ALL the time. My wife asks me, “Why do we always seem to have troubles with this, does everyone else have problems too?”
I wish I could find out what/where the issue is, or the best way to determine what is causing the problem.
@spikemixture said:
We all know you mean Amazon Fire.
Are you talking about the stick or fire TV - I still come from the hard wired school so sticks I don’t use.
There is only one model of Amazon Fire TV 4K & that is the little box that has an Ethernet port for a wired connection. The Fire Stick is HD & wireless only.
Would a Fire TV or Nvidia Shield be better for bluray rips with HD audio? Currently been using a Fire Stick which is rubbish, and just bought a Roku to test (No Kodi on here though so looking for one of the above).
Can’t go wrong with a Shield TV unit if it fits your price range.
@cayars said:
Can’t go wrong with a Shield TV unit if it fits your price range.
I’d opt for the Fire TV if it would support them properly as it’s less than half the price.
@JuiceWSA said:
Any ‘Stick’ makes a great cat toy.I love my AFTV. Too bad the Plex app blows.
Roku 3 - $84.90: https://www.amazon.com/Roku-Streaming-Player-4230R-Search/dp/B00UJ3IULO (while supplies last).
I got a Roku 3 (4200) Refurb (maybe they didn’t like the color) a while back for $76 (may have been $67 - Dementia right around the corner). Best purchase I’ve made in a long time.
Isn’t the app the same on all devices?
No, the apps are different across the different hardware. Each set of hardware can handle different codec and formats. From a play anything standpoint + additional apps (eg Amazon, Netflix, NFL) you can’t do better than the Shield TV.
Also the Shield TV uses vertical scrolling and not the 2 row horizontal scrolling like you would find on the Roku for example. Much, much easier to navigate and use. Plus can use voice search which works fantastic. But it costs more so …
@CBMFellows said:
@JuiceWSA said:
Any ‘Stick’ makes a great cat toy.I love my AFTV. Too bad the Plex app blows.
Roku 3 - $84.90: https://www.amazon.com/Roku-Streaming-Player-4230R-Search/dp/B00UJ3IULO (while supplies last).
I got a Roku 3 (4200) Refurb (maybe they didn’t like the color) a while back for $76 (may have been $67 - Dementia right around the corner). Best purchase I’ve made in a long time.
Isn’t the app the same on all devices?
In appearance - to some degree.
One of the reasons we keep recommending the Roku is because of it’s Plex app. It’s not hard to see the result of what happens when the lead developer spends quality time in the Roku forum dealing with issues and users and also what happens when the AFTV developers are the invisible men on the AFTV forum. The Roku Plex app is really the best and the AFTV Plex app is s***!.
@Warmongerx said:
Looking for an option to put at my girlfriend’s place. She has a 2012 Samsung Smart TV and the associated Plex client and while it works most of the time, it seems to be very finicky and is not officially supported by Plex. Last night was the epitome of problems with buffering every 15 seconds, while my phone on her WiFi at the same location was absolutely fine. TV is wired. Restarted TV several times, messed with buffering options, etc. Even remote restarted my server as a last result.I’d like to put her on something that works and works well without a lot of hand holding. Like most people who aren’t very tech savvy, she wants something that ‘just works’. While I’m most adept at the HTPC side of things PMP and OpenPHT, it’s not an affordable option for her at this time. Looking at Chromecast, Roku, FireTV or something else that might work at an affordable price.
Any advice?
Have you looked at an Odroid-C2 running Kodi with the new Kodi for Plex Add-on ?
For roughly $50-$60 you get a very small device, for plex playback, that is hard to beat.
What’s the 0droid like for playing Amazon/Netflix content? Would it be a user friendly interface or the same as a PC?
Just bought a Fire TV to replace the Roku - everything works fine so far and the Plex app seems okay, not much different from the others (@JuiceWSA why is it so bad?). I think due to the lack of receiver every file with HD audio will be transcoded anyway, even with the Shield so will be using this for the time being.
@CBMFellows said:
Just bought a Fire TV to replace the Roku - everything works fine so far and the Plex app seems okay, not much different from the others (@JuiceWSA why is it so bad?).
I saw back & forth between Roku & Fire TV 4K. I see little difference between the apps just slight cosmetic differences. I don’t think that there’s anything I can do on the Roku that I can’t do on the Fire TV 4K & vice versa. One downside of the Fire TV is that the native player (that the Plex app uses) only handles Dolby Digital so it’s not just HD audio that needs to be transcoded but even plain old DTS & my Seagate Personal Cloud struggles with this. One way round this is to use the Plex for Kodi add-on that uses the Kodi player which has bitstream passthrough so if you have an AV receiver you can play DTS Blu-ray rips. Rather than a local PMS I now use Plex Cloud which has outstanding transcoding abilities so it’s not an issue for me any more on th Fire TV 4K.
I spent quite a bit of time trying to nail down the best Plex client for my home theater. Needed it to be easy for the wife/family/babysitter and could never find anything that I liked. Always was some issue with the hardware being crappy, unsupported video/audio formats, bad client interface, etc. Used to run it on my PopcornHour A-400 which had some of the best audio support of any of my devices, but the client app was woefully underdeveloped.
Then I discovered the magic of the embedded Plex client install and never looked back. Grabbed and old mini ITX board I had and a small case and wallah, a Plex client that just works and does everything. Paired with flirc USB for the IR remote and now would never consider anything else for a client. I run the openPHT client (which isn’t offically supported) but Plex offers the embedded PMP, which is fully supported.
I’m really surprised Plex doesn’t showcase the option more visibly. The only way I even noticed the possibility of the embedded install was while Google searching ‘best Plex client’ and eventually ending back up here after threading through the various forums and tech sites. Up until then I didn’t even know what it was.
@nigelpb said:
@CBMFellows said:
Just bought a Fire TV to replace the Roku - everything works fine so far and the Plex app seems okay, not much different from the others (@JuiceWSA why is it so bad?).
I saw back & forth between Roku & Fire TV 4K. I see little difference between the apps just slight cosmetic differences. I don’t think that there’s anything I can do on the Roku that I can’t do on the Fire TV 4K & vice versa. One downside of the Fire TV is that the native player (that the Plex app uses) only handles Dolby Digital so it’s not just HD audio that needs to be transcoded but even plain old DTS & my Seagate Personal Cloud struggles with this. One way round this is to use the Plex for Kodi add-on that uses the Kodi player which has bitstream passthrough so if you have an AV receiver you can play DTS Blu-ray rips. Rather than a local PMS I now use Plex Cloud which has outstanding transcoding abilities so it’s not an issue for me any more on th Fire TV 4K.
Not sure if the Fire TV’s Plex app can play MKV files either - the files I’ve tried lately ends up transcoding (h264 to h264).
Also, on both the Plex app and Plex for Kodi, joint files don’t seem to play properly either - for example I have videos which are labelled as pt1, pt2, etc, where part 1 will play fine but it won’t play part 2.
Got the Shield back to try - on the Plex app the same MKV file video plays fine but audio transcodes as it doesn’t support EAC3. Plex for Kodi direct plays it.
My 2 bits worth.
I have a big NAS with an I7 as my Plex Server.
ALL my media is mp4 with no movie over 4gb in size.
New additions are mostly now h.265.
I own or have had Roku 3 and 4, Apple TV4, 3 Shields, Amazon TV, Amazon fire stick 4k, Raspberrey PI, Xbox 360, Xbox one, Samsung Smart TV’s , LG Smart Tv’s, Android Tablets and Phones.
For me it almost comes down to the remote - The GUI’s and layout while important has nothing to do with the watching.
So in order of ease of use and functionality of the remote here is my list.
Firestick 4K
Roku
Shield
Samsung TV,
Apple TV
LG TV
Xbox
Raspberry pi
