2014-07-16, 08:37
I've been running XBMC on the 2nd generation Apple TV since it was first possible. And I've been ok with it. It's been slow at times, but I haven't really realized what I've been missing out on. A week or so ago I received my Fire TV and yesterday I decided to dive into the world of Fire TV "hacking", and by following the documentation here I had XBMC running in about 15 minutes. I pushed a custom version of sources.xml and advancedsettings.xml with shared mysql library settings to the Fire TV and had my full library available shortly thereafter.
And:
This thing is so slick !
The provided remote is excellent and it is very responsive. I get associations to the early days of the responsiveness of the Xbox w/ a very light skin. Navigating around using the default confluence skin is so fluid and enjoyable, and I even gave some of the heavier skins a try. The Kindle Fire TV seems like it's tailored to us XBMC users !
So far I'm still launching XBMC via the Fire TV Settings menu, clearly not ideal but I can live with that for now while I try out some of the suggested workarounds.
Oh, and a neat thing: While watching a movie or TV show in XBMC, I can press the Microphone button, say "Netflix" and launch Netflix with a few clicks. When I exit out of Netflix I'm back in XBMC where the video I was watching is still on the screen, paused
Thanks to everyone involved in bringing XBMC to this new device !
Wishlist for Santa:
- A new remote which will keep the responsiveness of the Fire TV remote but provide a few extra buttons for volume, Info, etc.
- Voice search within XBMC (I know this is not possible at the moment, but I'm allowed to dream, right ?)
- XBMC launchable by saying "xbmc"
And:
This thing is so slick !
The provided remote is excellent and it is very responsive. I get associations to the early days of the responsiveness of the Xbox w/ a very light skin. Navigating around using the default confluence skin is so fluid and enjoyable, and I even gave some of the heavier skins a try. The Kindle Fire TV seems like it's tailored to us XBMC users !
So far I'm still launching XBMC via the Fire TV Settings menu, clearly not ideal but I can live with that for now while I try out some of the suggested workarounds.
Oh, and a neat thing: While watching a movie or TV show in XBMC, I can press the Microphone button, say "Netflix" and launch Netflix with a few clicks. When I exit out of Netflix I'm back in XBMC where the video I was watching is still on the screen, paused
Thanks to everyone involved in bringing XBMC to this new device !
Wishlist for Santa:
- A new remote which will keep the responsiveness of the Fire TV remote but provide a few extra buttons for volume, Info, etc.
- Voice search within XBMC (I know this is not possible at the moment, but I'm allowed to dream, right ?)
- XBMC launchable by saying "xbmc"