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.

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

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

They must have heard us!

http://www.aftvnews.com/netflix-releases-new-fire-tv-app/

Yeah, I really like the interface for Netflix on the Roku 3.

$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.

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.

If youve got an iPhone the remote app is way better than the actual remote for most things.

"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.

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

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.

> 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.)

Can you mirror a laptop to the tv using this?

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

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

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

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.

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 :)

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/

If it's like the Fire TV remote it's bluetooth and the microphone's inside it.

Could it be using the wifi to transmit the voice commands?

The Roku 3 uses Wi-fi direct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Direct

I wonder if it's that or BT.

Same as regular FireTV, bluetooth

Ultra-cheap mini-server potential?