The Amazon Fire TV 3 is on sale for $49.99 for today only. That’s 29% off of the regular price of $69.99 and it’s the first time that Amazon has ever put it on sale. The Fire TV 3 was very briefly available for $59.50 as part of Target’s site-wide Cyber Monday sale, but this current discount is the new lowest price that it has ever been. This is very likely the lowest price the Fire TV 3 will ever be for a long while. This sale ends tonight at midnight.
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In still in the FTV1. Is it smart to upgrade it wait for the next FTV?
If you use the extra ports on the Fire TV 1 (e.g., USB storage, optical audio, or ethernet) and you don’t have a 4K TV yet, then stick with the Fire TV 1 for now.
I bought one from earlier target deal for the 4k HDR. However, majority of 4K HDR on youtube (which is the biggest HDR content source right now) showing an error of “Unsupported video format”. Some of them play without triggering HDR. Only a few of them do play and do trigger HDR on my TV.
Contacted Amazon support and the person I chatted to just said it was a known issue, and it “may” gets resolved by future udpate. However, I tought the youtube app is owned by google and google is not getting along well with Amazon right now…
How can I buy it on Amazon.com with shipping to Poland? Any chance?
Seriously guys, don’t buy this thing. Even at $50, it is overpriced, and a flawed product.
Care to elaborate? Thanks!
As long as you only want to do streaming 4k I guess it’s fine. It can’t handle Kodi. Plex has audio sync issues with 4k. Can’t handle high bitrate 4K files at all. It doesn’t deserver to be called 3rd generation Fire TV. They made a better stick but a poor excuse for a box.
It can handle Kodi just fine. Kodi developers deliberately disabled Amlogic hardware acceleration on Kodi 17 because they think they’re influential enough to tell us what hardware to use. I installed Kodi 16.1 on my 3rd gen and it works brilliantly (as good as Kodi can work, at least. Their movie scrapers are terrible and their interface is okay at best).
While true that it doesn’t support bitrates higher than 35Mb/s, that is still quite a bit higher than the 2nd gen Box’s 25Mb/s. And everyone looooves the Box. The truth is that everyone is bashing the third gen FTV because the Kodi developers told them to hate it. Kodi devs can make themselves irrelevant by only supporting one device if they want. But I won’t let them tell me what I can use to stream my movies.
I couldn’t disagree with Dave more. I didn’t even know Kodi devs are telling people not to buy this (If that is even true). To say that’s why people don’t like this devices is absurd.
First, people generally prefer sticks or boxes over dongles. No one I have ever talked to has been a fan of dongles. Second, this should have been called the Fire TV Dongle, and priced at $40. I know they couldn’t call it a stick, but to make it sounds like a successor the the more powerful FTV2 was a really bad idea. It’s missing usb, sd slot, ethernet, is slower, etc…
This turd is based off of a 2 year old SoC. The hardware can be had in a million Chinese boxes for $25. Charging $70 for this is too much and pales in comparison to the value prior FTV devices have had.
When this hardware was released a year ago and called the Mi Box, Elias himself said it was crappy. And that version at least had a USB port and access to the play store! Even with Amazons add-on adapter, people are having issues mounting usb drives in some apps, or connecting to their NAS devices.
Again, if this device was marketed as the replacement to the stick, and priced accordingly, I think it would have been rec’d much better. But instead it bumped the more powerful/functional box from the lineup. A major marketing mistake by Amazon IMO.
Thank you clocks for a great response. I will now always think of this device as a square turd ! I don’t know how anyone can not recongnise the issues with this generation. Unless of course they work for Amazon. !
You guys can disagree with me all you want, but everything in the post I responded to was wrong.
-He said it can’t handle Kodi but it can. Kodi developers were the ones who purposely ended support for this chipset. Installing Kodi 16 works fine. So I was right and he was wrong.
-He said audio is out of sync when playing 4K videos on Plex. I’ve watched three 4K movies on Plex and they all worked perfectly without sync problems.
-He said it can’t handle high bitrates, but its max bitrate is quite a bit higher than the Box.
-Everyone loves saying the new device doesn’t support ethernet but it does.
-“First, people generally prefer sticks or boxes over dongles.”
What in the **** are you even talking about? You people are just making up reasons to continue hating the new device. Keep on hating it. I don’t care. Just know that your reasoning is silly.
“This turd is based off of a 2 year old SoC.”
So is the Nvidia Shield
“The hardware can be had in a million Chinese boxes for $25.”
The hardware is good enough to play the videos. That’s all I care about. The difference is in the software. Those Chinese boxes don’t get software updates and aren’t certified to play Netflix. The FTV doesn’t have those problems. Streamers are like tablets and cell phones at this point – they aren’t going to get faster each year. They already work well enough.
“Charging $70 for this is too much and pales in comparison to the value prior FTV devices have had.”It was $50 today and the same people are still bashing it in the comments sections.
“And that version at least had a USB port and access to the play store!”
I’m still not sold on the Play Store or Android TV in general. Google doesn’t seem to do much with it. You can’t even customize your background in Android TV. All of these operating systems suck and all of these devices are lackluster. I plug my laptop into my TV when I want power and control. I use the Fire TV when I want to watch a movie before going to bed.
““This turd is based off of a 2 year old SoC.”
So is the Nvidia Shield””
So what does the Nvidia Shield have to do with this? I didn’t know we were comparing this device to the Shield, but if we are, it loses by an even larger gap than it does to the FTV2. Please don’t be silly enough to compare a s905 vs a Tegra (or the FTV3 vs Shield), as it will just make you sound even sillier.
I’m glad you are happy with this device, but it clearly has been a huge disappointment to many, and that has nothing to do with what Kodi devs might be posting in some forum.
And I haven’t experienced any audio sync issues with Plex, in 4K or 1080p. The smear campaign against this device is as dishonest as it is mysterious.
It’s not a smear campaign. There are genuine problems with this generation.
My biggest issue is that Plex no longer plays 5.1 audio in either the Gen 2 or 3 models. Yet they play fine with the Generation 1.
This is a recognized and known problem that Plex admit is an ongoing issue. Question being is it fair to actually criticize Amazon for this, when the problem actually needs to be solved by Plex ?
Regardless there is absolutely no doubt that the Gen 3 is a step backwards and I hope the planned new Box with always on Alexa is an improvement.
Does anyone have any idea whether it is still possible to download apps from another region to the Fire TV? For instance, from the UK? Thanks in advance.
I’m in the U.K. and I have downloaded the occasional app from links that Elias has posted on the side of the page (Amazon..com). Games have always worked but video apps tend to be region locked
Thanks! I’m actually trying to obtain UK-specific apps to upload to my US AFTV.
The only way to do that is to have a Uk Amazon account, billed to a UK address using your same Amazon credentials. . Plus you will need a DNS or VPN service. Once you’ve done this and loaded the specific apps, you can then switch back to your US account and you’ll still see the UK apps and they will play just fine.
Avoid this thing like the plague. It’s beyond flawed. I still prefer the FTV1 Box, still the only Fire TV Generation that give 5.1 audio when using Plex.
The third gen Fire TV supports Dolby Atmos, AC3, eAC3, AAC-LC, HE-AACv1, HE-AACv2, FLAC, MIDI, MP3, PCM/Wave, Vorbis, AMR-NB, AMR-WB.
Forgive me, but I’m going to avoid your advice like the plague. Surround sound obviously works fine on the third gen Fire TV. Not sure what you’re smoking.
There is no need to be rude. Go to the Plex forum and you will see the recognized ongoing issue with 5.1 audio in the Gen 2 & 3 models.
Don’t go accusing people of being ‘on’ something until you have done your research.
Plus there a ways of disagreeing with someone without resorting to being offensive.
This is a great device. I just got it after owning the 2nd gen Fire tv stick and 2nd gen Fire tv box. This new fire tv is as powerful as the box and it can handle Kodi with skins just fine. It doesn’t stutter like the stick.
I am totally with CLOCKS’ assessment of this still flawed device. I am just SO disappointed with the performance of this new FIRE TV, and keep waiting for software updates to fix the problems. As of today, Jan. 5, the problems remain. It’s absurd that my 2nd Generation Fire Stick works better than this turd of a device.
C’MON AMAZON!!