

Amazon Fire TV Stick - wuliwong
http://www.amazon.com/firetvstick

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wuliwong
With the $20 discount as a Prime member it only comes to $19. I decided to
give it a try. I had actually been considering purchasing a Roku recently
because my Chromecast doesn't work with my new Comcast router without some
router adjustments. For $19, I'm ok with using this for Netflix rather than
Chromecast and having to figure out how to setup my router to not use the 5ghz
channel.

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jcastro
The bummer is that the Netflix app for FireOS is old compared to what you get
on other devices.

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wuliwong
Ah, I obviously haven't tried it yet. I sure hope they have an update to the
Netflix app soon.

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jcastro
They must have heard us!

[http://www.aftvnews.com/netflix-releases-new-fire-tv-
app/](http://www.aftvnews.com/netflix-releases-new-fire-tv-app/)

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kapilkale
$19 makes this an incredible impulse buy.

I recently lost my apple tv remote and buying a fire stick is more attractive
than trying to figure out where to buy a new remote and how to set it up.

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mercutio2
You can program any IR remote (like, for instance, your TV remote) to act as
your AppleTV remote. Much more convenient than using the provided-by-Apple
remote.

Of course to teach the Apple TV you'll need a working remote or mobile app, so
if you don't have any iOS devices you may be out of luck.

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mcintyre1994
"Fire TV stick cannot be powered directly by your HDTV and should be plugged
into the wall"

That's really disappointing, I'd rather have less power and be able to power
via the TV USB port like chromecast. Maybe even a dealbreaker, definitely
broke my impulse buy for now.

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anonymouse123
I'm assuming it means it's the same as the Chromecast, i.e. it isn't powered
from the HDMI port.

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ripter
Chromecast is typically powered by the USB port on the TV, not the wall. I'm
not going to buy this if I need to plug it into the wall.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Chromecast is typically powered by the USB port on the TV, not the wall.

Chromecast is powered by USB, whether that comes from the TV or the wall
depends on whether the TV has a free USB port (which requires having a USB
port to start with.) I suspect lots of Chromecasts are used with older, pre-
USB TVs (the popularity of TV USB ports largely coincides with Smart TVs, and
Chromecast adds more to a TV that isn't already a Smart TV.)

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kookiekrak
Can you mirror a laptop to the tv using this?

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shanselman
It has been confirmed by Amazon to support Miracast, so that would make it the
cheapest way to get Windows 8.1 wirelessly cast.

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dang
[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=fire+stick#!/story/forever/0/fire%...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=fire+stick#!/story/forever/0/fire%20stick)

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bsilvereagle
Has anyone ran the Amazon Fire TV/Chromecast through a proxy to see what sort
of information is being sent back to Amazon/Google?

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woobar
Anyone knows what tech is used by included remote? BT or IR?

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wuliwong
This has turned out to be far more difficult to find out than I would have
guessed. I still don't know! They also sell an optional "voice controller", I
would assume that uses the same tech. Maybe we can figure it out through those
specs.

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MattPearce
I think we can safely assume it is bluetooth (as the streaming stick is
usually behind the TV, out of line-of-sight.

Plus they need to use bluetooth for the voice controller anyway - good luck
transmitting voice data over IR :)

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ryanburk
the remote for the fire tv is bluetooth[1], so I think that is a safe
assumption.

and the picture of voice over IR made me think of the IR stream coming out
like morse code...

[1] [http://zatznotfunny.com/2014-04/tale-three-
remotes/](http://zatznotfunny.com/2014-04/tale-three-remotes/)

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mamcx
Ultra-cheap mini-server potential?

