[DankNasty]

Yep, I use those for two of my pi's, they work just fine.

I don't want burst your bubble, but had I seen this sooner, I would have recommended you go with the Amazon Fire TV over either of these two. I've had pi's for the last two years and they are great, but they are just as expensive (ballpark) as an AFTV after you add up the SD card, USB drive (if you do go this route, highly recommended putting the storage on a usb drive, faster caching, as noted above), power adapter, HDMI cable, case, etc.

My FireTV is much snappier than my pi's (not that the pi's performance is bad), and can play everything I have thrown at it thusfar (blue ray rips, heavy MPEG2), plus you have the added benefit of android apps.

So unless you want to mess with the GPIO of the pi... I'd return it and go with the AFTV.

But that's just me.

I actually havn't gone above the 50 dollar mark with shipping and tax and the included noobs card and from what i've seen amazon fire's are all around $100? All the other parts I have tons of hdmi, powercables, usb flash drives etc (and from what i've heard it does not need a case to work?). Also I don't plan to run a media server or play any android apps I just want to watching streaming content over xbmc. Is the amazon fire any better than the pi at doing this?

[rushingjs]

Sure, I understand. I had some of these things just lying around as well. I have had a few usb's die on me (because of constant loading of metadata/fanart, providing a buffer for content, etc) as well, so I've had to replace those. I would highly recommend a case, as dust and electronics generally don't mix well over the long run. I'm not trying to dissuade you, I'm just trying to share my experience and perspective.

I would say that in my limited time with the AFTV I can say yes, it is "better" than the pi only in the sense that its extremely sharp and responsive compared to the pi. Also there are a decent amount of android apps that provide free streaming content as well, and I would expect that number to continue rising. It's not all just games I guess is what I'm trying to say.

Anyway, good luck, enjoy the pi... I certainly have (and I still use them in my guest bedrooms). They're pretty awesome little devices.

[DankNasty]

Sure, I understand. I had some of these things just lying around as well. I have had a few usb's die on me (because of constant loading of metadata/fanart, providing a buffer for content, etc) as well, so I've had to replace those. I would highly recommend a case, as dust and electronics generally don't mix well over the long run. I'm not trying to dissuade you, I'm just trying to share my experience and perspective.

I would say that in my limited time with the AFTV I can say yes, it is "better" than the pi only in the sense that its extremely sharp and responsive compared to the pi. Also there are a decent amount of android apps that provide free streaming content as well, and I would expect that number to continue rising. It's not all just games I guess is what I'm trying to say.

Anyway, good luck, enjoy the pi... I certainly have (and I still use them in my guest bedrooms). They're pretty awesome little devices.

Yea I think my next purchase after this is gonna be a nuc with some gaming abilities anyway so I think the pi will be fine for now. Just out of curiosity which android free streaming apps do they have now (i've been out of this scene a while) I know about crackle but they make you watch ads which I want to avoid.