Kodi running on a FireTV?

[mike27oct]

I'm curious, is anyone other than me in these forums running the Kodi app on their FireTV -- Stick or Box?

I have it installed and successfully running on two FireTV sticks, and it does a great job as a media player to play all videos and music files from various devices on my home network.

Is anyone having issues installing or running Kodi on FireTV?

[jwlv]

I used Kodi on my Fire Tablet and Fire TV Sticks. But I don't have anything that I stream from my network, so I eventually removed it.

[mike27oct]

I am very much into streaming music and quality video to devices all over the house, and when away from home I remotely stream music and video.  Not a lot, I mostly stream remotely when on trips, I basically have no media stored on my mobile devices; I stream media to them instead.

I have a large and growing digital music collection, and have converted some of my movie disc collection to digital format, so they can easily be streamed and played on TV and iPads.  The past 5-6 years I have been using a WDTV media player as the engine that plays the digital content to my TV and stereo.  The content is on various hard drives on the home network, and a year ago I got a large capacity WD MyCloud NAS to store media files in.  Most of the digital content is streamed from the NAS source today.

The problem today is that WD apparently stepped away from the media player business by not making or selling any new models for a couple of years now, and fans of the device are looking for alternatives to play their media on multiple TVs, and as their older WDTVs end their lifespan. Kodi is a popular alternative when installed on Android media boxes, Raspberry Pi box and even the FireTVs.  It is like using a WDTV in many ways.

So, since I had a FireTV I hardly used (it was redundant of the many other gadgets I have) a few months ago I installed Kodi on it and gave it a new purpose for existing in my house!  I recently got another FireTV for a new guest room TV and installed Kodi on it. 

I have even had the FireTV w/Kodi connected to my 2TB portable wireless drive with media files on it.  I can play media from that drive on the FireTV w/Kodi to TV.  I plan to take a Fire Stick w/Kodi and wireless drive along on our next vacation trip to a beach resort to entertain us at night.  Oh yes, I will also take along a small and fast, dual-band router so we can properly run all these wireless gadgets, because the wireless signal at small beach resorts are usually really slow and bad.  Last but not least, a Tap will come along as well.  The trunk will be full.

[Mork74]

i find plex much better for media streaming from your own devices. i believe it also has a fire addon

my tv has the addon, tablet, phone and chromecast all connecting to my pc for tv shows, movies and pictures and it nicely pulls down all the poster etc and remembers where i was up to on each film or episode etc

[mike27oct]

I also have installed Plex on my WD My Cloud DL2100 NAS (it is built to handle the heavy processing demands of Plex, whereas lesser quality WD NAS units, i.e. the basic My Clouds cannot even handle Plex ). I can watch Plex content on PCs, FireTV, and Roku.  Try as I might, I still do not prefer using Plex and choose to watch my movies and hear my music over other devices.  It think that Plex is overblown and overkill, and still prefer my media to come through my WDTV media player or FireTV/Kodi.  Since a lot of my video media is on ISO or MKV files, Plex cannot easily play any video other than mp4/m4v files which I only have for viewing on small screens such as tablets and phones.  To heck with all the Plex movie poster stuff, I prefer a basic listing of the movie titles as seen on WDTV or FireTV.

BTW, the Kodi/FireTV combo is a good alternative to a WDTV.  I have both on the main TV, and only FireTV on a secondary TV, and can do most anything a WDTV can do on the FireTV.

[Mork74]

i play mkv and 720-1080p over plex to tv and tablets, desont seem an issue

must depend on your source.  mine runs from my pc.  makes it easier for the wife and kids to see the files and play

[mike27oct]

Most of my videos are in ISO files and Plex cannot easily handle them; Kodi and WDTV media player do fine.  I do have some of these ISO files recoded as  smaller m4v/mp4 files for use on mobile devices.  Plex can handle them fine, but they are best viewed on a mobile device or small TV screen (under 48" or less).  Plex must recode ISO files "on the fly," and that is not what I want to happen; I want to view from ISO directly.

[boudicca]

Yes Mike, Kodi on the firetv is pretty sweet. I use it primarily with local media but through plugins various media options are available.  Obviously if you are going to wish to use it away from home, then since it connects to home media via nfs or smb.cifs exposing those protocols could be risky. If your content is legally held, Amazon/Google do offer cloud hosted storage, which you can connect to from anywhere, also quite a nas drive suppliers also do mirrored cloud content, inc netgear etc. All in all there many options here with the firetv and ftv stick.

Alias from www.aftvnews.com is a good read and obviously the forums on forum.xda-developers.com/fire-tv also have plenty of tips and tricks etc

[mike27oct]

Thanks for the input.  Oh, it's YOU.  OK, we will try again in another thread.

I will be setting up a third FireTV this week or so; could not pass up the recent Amazon sale price of $30 for new model with voice remote.  My first FireTV will become the "traveling stick" I will keep in my gadget bag.

I have ways to stream remotely.  I had a virtual cloud called Pogoplug where I stored some videos I could stream to tablet, but the competition is tough and they shut down the virtual cloud service recently.  They kept the home device "cloud" server available so I can still use that using my cloud "box" with drives attached,

Have not added any add-on options to Kodi since I have many streaming services, including now, Comcast Xfinity.  The newest X1 box enables streaming of one's DVR recordings, and a few weeks ago I had a chance to try it out on a vacation.  It was really cool to stream the programs I had recorded while I was still away.  Best thing that has happened to cable TV.  Feature is also cool for use at home where we can watch cable TV shows on iPads rather than the TV if we want to.