Which Fire TV Stick?

[bitchstewie]

I never know whether this will end up in the TV forum or the Home Cinema one so I'll let the mods decide

Is there any benefit in buying anything better than the "Fire TV Stick 4K Ultra HD" if I want a Fire Stick to connect to my 4K TV?

I have Amazon Prime already but may look at Now TV and Disney+ if I can summon up the willpower to ditch Sky Plus.

The 4K ultra is £35 right now so it seems a no-brainer.

[anonymoususer]

bhstewie said:

I never know whether this will end up in the TV forum or the Home Cinema one so I'll let the mods decide

Is there any benefit in buying anything better than the "Fire TV Stick 4K Ultra HD" if I want a Fire Stick to connect to my 4K TV?

I have Amazon Prime already but may look at Now TV and Disney+ if I can summon up the willpower to ditch Sky Plus.

The 4K ultra is £35 right now so it seems a no-brainer.

Its your best option if you want 4k simply because its the only one that I believe kicks out at 4K apart from the cube

We have gone down fire tv type units route rather than sticks the latest one being the cube 2.
Reason for this is they connect via ethernet and wherever possible we prefer an ethernet connection and didnt want a trailing wire to a power supply. I reallise this may be of no importance to others its just a personal choice
The Cube also has a faster processor but its double the price of the stick.

[AJB88]

Latest 4k one works brilliantly even for non 4K, I upgraded my older HD one for the 4K one and it runs a lot better.

I also have one of the older FireTV HD Boxes downstairs with a wired connection, tempted to replace that with the new Chromecast TV device.

[xyz123]

Latest 4K has much better processor than last one so get the latest version even if you don't have access to 4K.

[David_M]

AJB88 said:

Latest 4k one works brilliantly even for non 4K, I upgraded my older HD one for the 4K one and it runs a lot better.

Ditto. The 4k sticks interface works much better, even though I am only using it for HD.

[RizzoTheRat]

The cube is basically a 4K firestick plus an Echo dot, so only worth getting if you want an echo. The firestick lets you do voice commands via the remote control if you want to anyway.

[bitchstewie]

Thanks, I don't want a Cube for any reason I know of and NowTV doesn't work on the Cube yet.

Presume for "normal" Fire Stick stuff the Cube is overkill?

[mcflurry]

anonymoususer said:

Reason for this is they connect via ethernet and wherever possible we prefer an ethernet connection and didnt want a trailing wire to a power supply.

You can get the ethernet for the stick too - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Amazon-Ethernet-Adaptor-R...
On the flip side, it's an extra wire

[boiler2003]

bhstewie said:

I have Amazon Prime already but may look at Now TV and Disney+

I don't think the Firestick will do NowTV* - Sky and Amazon do not appear to be best of friends. The Roku stick does do Now TV as well as Amazon Prime, Netflix and all the rest.

Edited to add, *without a bit of jiggery pokery

[bitchstewie]

boiler2003 said:

I don't think the Firestick will do NowTV - Sky and Amazon do not appear to be best of friends. The Roku stick does do Now TV as well as Amazon Prime, Netflix and all the rest.

They do on some of them officially as of end of last year.

Trying to find one stick to rule them all has been a fking nightmare if I am ever to break the grip of Sky.

Still no solution to "channel hopping" though and still need to dick about switching between HDMI inputs for Freeview or Freesat and streaming which is a PITA.

I don't get why there isn't a single box that can do all of this.

[Chozza]

Fire TV Stick 4K Ultra HD

As far as "one stick to rule them all" this is as close as I've got

Netflix, Prime , NowTV , Disney BBC / 5 / 4 / itv hub , Spotify etc. ( Kids with StudentIDs ... so nothing is full price )

It also seems to work better as a TV/ Sound Bar remote than the earlier models so at least with the LGs we have it switches to the right HDMI and powers up/ controls volume - better than anything else.

also seems to have a better chipset - the previous sticks seemed a bit laggy this one seems smooth.

[Geoffscars]

I have a holiday home where I use the free bt wi fi
Strong signal and works I pad and phone without a problem
Is there a roku type device that will use this to play tv?

[SBDJ]

bhstewie said:

Still no solution to "channel hopping" though and still need to dick about switching between HDMI inputs for Freeview or Freesat and streaming which is a PITA.

You will always have to switch between apps to some extent, so I don't think you'll ever get a perfect legal channel hopping solution.

For the input switching you could use something like HDHomeRun which will act as a streaming source for sources such as Freeview. I have one plugged into the aerial in the loft and set as a source in Emby which allows use of a TV guide, time shifting, centralised recording etc.

[chrisch77]

Buy the cheapest one.

Because this is PH so next week you will naturally be superceding it with a new massive OLED smart TV anyway...

[Digger]

I am happy with my Fire TV Stick 4K Ultra HD. Use it on my 1080p TV, good snappy performance. Has the added unexpected bonus of having Twitch support at 1080p.

Only minor point is I believe Now TV is limited to 720p on this stick. You'll need one of the older Now TV boxes, or I believe pay for Now TV Boost to get 1080p. still looks good at 720p.

[bitchstewie]

SBDJ said:

You will always have to switch between apps to some extent, so I don't think you'll ever get a perfect legal channel hopping solution.

For the input switching you could use something like HDHomeRun which will act as a streaming source for sources such as Freeview. I have one plugged into the aerial in the loft and set as a source in Emby which allows use of a TV guide, time shifting, centralised recording etc.

Yeah I'd seen those before but hadn't quite grasped what they do.

So to be clear I drop one of those on the home network with an aerial connected and I can browse to it from any home device (even using a web browser) and stream live Freeview?

That could be a winner for me as I watch live TV on a computer in the office a lot using Sky Go right now.

What's the interface and EPG like please? Everything seems to be US oriented on their website so does everything work?

My TV is a 4K Philips but the UI is a piece of crap and there's about four button presses needed to switch HDMI inputs which I guess the Fire TV can't help with

[xeny]

bhstewie said:

My TV is a 4K Philips but the UI is a piece of crap and there's about four button presses needed to switch HDMI inputs which I guess the Fire TV can't help with

It doesn't have an option to switch on defaulting to the input from an HDMI port rather than the built in tuner?

[bitchstewie]

xeny said:

It doesn't have an option to switch on defaulting to the input from an HDMI port rather than the built in tuner?

It may have that but I meant if you want to channel hop from a Fire Stick to Freeview or Freesat for example.

[Murph7355]

bhstewie said:

Yeah I'd seen those before but hadn't quite grasped what they do.

So to be clear I drop one of those on the home network with an aerial connected and I can browse to it from any home device (even using a web browser) and stream live Freeview?

That could be a winner for me as I watch live TV on a computer in the office a lot using Sky Go right now.

What's the interface and EPG like please? Everything seems to be US oriented on their website so does everything work?

My TV is a 4K Philips but the UI is a piece of crap and there's about four button presses needed to switch HDMI inputs which I guess the Fire TV can't help with

The interface/guide out of the box with these isn't great IMO. I haven't tried linking it up with third party guides etc though.

I use one as the way coax was run in my house (probably when it was built 500yrs ago ) means that reception in a couple of rooms is poor. But I get a very strong signal in the loft and the HDHomeRun sends it round the network with a decent picture.

Runs nicely on Firesticks too (which I rate - 4k one is all you need IMO).

(Disney+ is pretty good, especially if you have kids. But the content is a bit limited IMO if you already own DVDs etc of their major film content).

[bitchstewie]

Thanks that might have saved me £100 on a punt.

Right now I have an ageing Sky+ box and if you take away Bloomberg and CNBC I can get the movies and sports via Now TV and a Sky Sports Mobile subscription.

I could go from around £90/month to about £15.

I already have Prime and I don't really want to end up with a pile of boxes or switching between 3 different HDMI inputs on the TV when right now I mostly channel hop.

How are other people going about this?