Fire TV - Initial Impressions from an ATV User
#1
Smile 
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 ! Wink

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 Cool

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"
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#2
You might want to have a look at this thread on XDA. ;-)

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthre...?t=2790392

Regards.
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#3
And this right here on XBMC forum. Plus this.
[H]i-[d]eft [M]edia [K]een [V]ideosaurus
My Family Room Theater
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#4
you should set up the llama/classic tv thing to launch from the main menu. only takes 10 minutes or so to set it up.

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Ama...ome_Screen
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#5
I now have "XBMC for Fire TV" as my launcher, and can start Netflix, Hulu, Youtube and Pandora from the XBMC home screen.
Whenever I am running anything from the Fire TV launcher, clicking the home button takes me right back to where I left XBMC.

Things are getting closer and closer to perfect Smile Does anyone know if it's possible to map the Home button to always go back to the XBMC home screen ? Right now, the Home button does not do anything when I'm already in XBMC.
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#6
Firmware version 1.09
http://www.mediafire.com/download/abmv95...+1.0.9.zip
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