As my Mrs insists on paying for Amazon Prime simply for the occasionally free postage, I thought we migth as well make the most out of Amazon TV, and any other telly available, so I can say “I’ve got 2000 channels and there’s still nowt worth watching”.
so which is the best streamer?
Roku appears to sell their best stuff only in the US, and besides, it’s allegedly a Murdoch copany, but the kit looks decent.
There’s Amazon’s Fire TV, which I gather they won’t be making any more and suffers from annoying banner ads right in the way on the home screen.
There’s Nerdy Android boxes to run Kodi/Perk etc on, and to handily introduce vruses.
Then there’s gaming devices at £much more, of which the NVidia Shield TV looks the most attractive as I’m not into gaming and it’s cheaper.
However, pics are going to be on a projector, which means a 6m HDMI cable, and sound is going to be on the hifi, which means an HDMI extractor and RCA switcher due to not enough amp inputs.
So any recommendations for the best value of these as well?
I use the PS4
Shield is what my brother in law recommends if you want the best. If he has one it’s got to be good.
I use a FireTV and the banner ads aren’t distracting. I believe Amazon are about to release a new one.
But how best to get sound on the hifi?
I use a Fire TV stick, and take a digital feed out from the telly to an AV receiver with DAC when I want music out.
not an option for me as pics go to a projector and sound to an analogue pre-amp…
Amazon Fire TV 1 has an optical out, buy a maplin DAC and you can have the audio into the analogue preamp then
yes that is what I do in our bedroom, except I use a cheap EBay DAC and then go analogue into our Marantz all-in-one
Do bear in mind that Amazon Prime is utterly shit, and basically seems to be a system for upselling their other video streaming services.
Prime isn’t a great streaming service at all, there are a few things worth watching on it but netflix is far better.
We have multiple solutions, our tv is ‘smart’ and can handle prime and netflix natively however we also have a shield tv which we use for the less conventional streaming methods. We also have a firestick upstairs which is ok but very slow and laggy when using the interface, streams fine though.
I’d recommend the sheild and a netflix subscription, also get yourself a vpn (i use ipvanish and use it on my phone and pc when out and about) not only is it good internet safety but you can choose your ‘exit point’ and thus gain access to various countries flavours of netflix which all have different content.
The sheild is blisteringly fast and deals with 4k and HDR without issue, apps are a bit scarce but all the major stuff is easily available on google play and if it isn’t can be side loaded pretty easily.The 16gb version is plenty for a simple streaming box but if you want to play games either go for the 500gb hdd version or get the right sd card to expand the internal memory, I used a cheap 64gb card and it slowed the system right down so eventually removed it and went back to the internal 16gb.