A couple weeks ago, the Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick received their most feature packed update yet. A few days ago we saw the release of a new minor update for both devices. These new updates consist primarily of bug fixes but Amazon did slip in one new feature to the Photos section. You can now mark photos as favorites. Here is an overview of the new update.
These new updates carry version number 51.1.5.0_user_515030720 for the Fire TV and version number 54.1.1.0_user_110041020. These are minor updates since the main version number did not change from the previous software update. Only the build number (the numbers after the “user” part) has changed. Since this is a minor update, Amazon is releasing it to devices at a faster pace than the previous large update. Most devices should already have this update available.
Photo Favorites
When scrolling through photos, in addition to the “Start Slideshow” button, you now have a new button which marks the photo as a favorite. Favorited photos are indicated by a transparent heart icon in the lower right corner.
You can also add photos to favorites when viewing an individual photo by pressing the menu button on your remote.
Once you’ve marked at least one photo as a favorite, a new “Favorites” section appears under the “All” section in the main Photo area. Favorited photos are synced across all of your Fire TV devices. Marking a photo as a favorite on one Fire TV will cause it to appear as a favorite on all other Fire TV’s registered to the same Amazon account. Unfortunately, there is no way to view or edit favorited photos within Amazon’s cloud drive website.
You can now also filter any photo album to show only your favorited photos.
Favorites as Screensaver
There is a new option under the screensaver settings to select your favorited photos as the photo album used by the Fire TV and Fire TV Stick’s screensaver.
Bug Fixes
These new software updates also include various bug fixes. As always, Amazon hasn’t specified exactly what bugs were fixed. A twitter conversation I had with AFTVnews reader Thomas seems to indicate that some of the bug fixes had to do with Miracast display mirroring. Thomas says he was unable to mirror his Samsung Note smartphone to his Fire TV prior to this update, but can now do it successfully.
Update: 4/13/2015
X-Ray
Included with this update is the new X-Ray feature which displays additional about actors, characters, and music in the Amazon Instant Video movie or show that you’re viewing. This new feature was included in the update but was not activated until April 13th when Amazon officially announced the feature.
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Thanks for listing these updates they help me update with my Fire TV skin.
Sure thing. Got a link to the skin?
It’s a WIP so it’s not released yet but here’s the Kodi thread –
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=207475
and Imgur link –
http://imgur.com/a/VUKAu#0
Looks great! Be sure to email me when it’s done and I’ll write a post about it.
Will do, thanks.
ALT+TAB functionality is still broken.
Is broken alt+tab across entire system update or just within the photo section?
For some reason I can no longer sync my Amazon app content. I attempt to sync the latest apps that I’ve clouded but they don’t reflect on my FireTV. Any suggestions? My FireTV is rooted with rbox’s boot menu and an unlocked bootloader.