The Certified Refurbished 2nd-Gen Fire TV will be back in stock next week and is once again available to order now. Ever since the Fire TV 3 was released, availability of the refurbished Fire TV 2 has been sporadic and very limited. The product listing currently says it will be in stock on June 25th and it’s possible to place an order now to secure one. This might be one of the last chances to buy a Fire TV 2 directly from Amazon, so if you were in the market for a new Fire TV but decided that the Fire TV Cube was not for you, then you might want to snag a Fire TV 2 while you still can.
The streaming device market as a whole is shifting away from gaming-centric hardware to less expensive devices that focus mainly on video playback specs. While the Fire TV 3 and Fire TV Cube are technically better video players, thanks to their support for 4K @ 60 FPS and their support for HDR, the Fire TV 2 does hold certain advantages.
The Fire TV 2 has superior gaming capabilities, thanks to its more powerful GPU. It also has built-in Ethernet, USB, and microSD, which are things that require the use of external dongles for the Fire TV Cube. It is also the only Fire TV model that can use the headphone jack on the Fire TV Game Controller.
If you’re thinking of getting the Fire TV 2, instead of the Fire TV Cube, be aware that there are things you’re giving up. The Fire TV 2 is limited to 4K @ 30 FPS and doesn’t support HDR. It also only has 8GB of internal storage, compared to the Cube’s 16GB. The Fire TV 2 is running Fire OS 5, while the Cube runs Fire OS 6. There’s no advantage at all to Fire OS 6 right now, but that might one day change and we don’t know if Fire OS 5 devices will ever be updated to Fire OS 6. Lastly, of course, you’re giving up the hands-free and IR capabilities of the Fire TV Cube if you decide to buy the Fire TV 2.
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Still my main streaming device to this day. Bought three with various coupons deals and got them for about $65-$70. Never though 2.5 years later they would still be the best option for me.
The only downside is 4K@30 FPS. And even that isn’t a big downside. There isn’t much 4K compared to the volume of what people watch nor will there be in the very near future. It has and will continue to be a slow progression of mainly in house programming, a few movie titles and and some sports events. While HDR is very important and really does add to the PQ, again there are relatively few tittles out there with it. I remind people a show or title that has 4K and HDR still has to be something I want to watch. So of the relatively few things that are 4K and have HDR how much of that would you want to watch? Really limits the importance of 4K at this time.
Seeing the specs again reminds of how much better this unit is for most people then the newer units.
Is there any difference between FTV2 vs FTV3/Cube as far as using Kodi?
No substantial difference for basic Kodi use.
Starting from Kodi v17, audio pass-through for DTS, and DTS-HD, TrueHD is not supported on Fire TV2 (Fire OS 5)
If you are a Tablo user, you should know that the Fire TV 3 pendant model has a studdering video proble.
Just got the FTV3 and the Amazon Ethernet adapter, while the dongle was on sale for 49.99. The combo is every bit as fast and responsive as the FTV2 and I have one in use and have owned 4 of them. With the updates since last fall they have made it work very nice. Very happy with it.
If I get the ftv2 and attach an external drive, can I download my prime video library to it or only other apps?
You can but it hinges on creating a directory structure that is identical to the player app you plan to use that’s installed to the boxes internal memory.
If you’re asking can you download videos from Amazon for offline viewing, like you can with Fire tablets, then no, you cannot. But if you have your own video files already, then yes, you can put those on a drive and plug that into the USB port and watch those videos through any media player app.
I have a Fire TV 2. Can I plug a hard drive with movies on into it and watch them with a video player app? If so, this became my new library media manager!
You can plug usb storage into the FTV2 to watch, but this is probably not the best solution. It works, but some sort of NAS would be a far better option. Quite a few routers have usb ports also, this may be a decent option depending on the router.
You can, but it needs to be formatted to fat32. I use large size flash drives rather than an external hard drive to watch mkv, mp4 and x265 content on my fire tv 2 using the vimu app from the,amazon store. My trusty wdtv live is still the best device, for me, to watch a connected hard drive full of media content. It’s long in the tooth now with no support for the x265 codec, but other than that, it still plays everything I throw at it.
I’ve got FT2 and I use VLC for fire, and NAS with an NTFS formatted 128Gb 3.0 SanDisk thumb, flashed new DD-Wrt firmware on a Netgear 6300 that supports usb 3.0 and NAS. Found out the hard way fat32 has file limitations, so my one for one copies of Blurays weren’t compatible. You can network search your lan for the NAS and it’s a few clicks from then on.
The question now will be if they are on current firmware. Then this means you can’t root them, but you could block updates and wait for root later on or until availabile.
I imagine that it’s unlikely that these are rootable. I’d love to know what software version they are on from someone who buys from this batch.
Elias,
You da man. Thanks so much for keeping track of all this. I had a while back got one off ebay but still wanted another for the house so this was perfect timing.
It will be a long time before we even bother with 4K content (not to mention we don’t even have a 4K set), so having gen2’s fit the bill perfectly for us. As others have said, these are great little boxes and run Kodi well (with our Emby backend).
You bet!
Kodi has nothing to do with a device being “rooted” or “jailbroken” which aren’t even correct terms, it is sideloaded. You can do that no matter what the firmware is. Just saying.
Can you use the game controller to listen to Netflix, Hulu etc….through the headphone jack on the game controller ?
Yes you can. When headphones are connected to the controller, all Fire TV audio, regardless of app, passes through the headphones.
Thanks
By far the best AFTV to date. Sadly it’s not showing any stock or preordering ability when I use the link in the post.
Shows the order button and the expected date for me.
Yup no option to order
$84.99 and available on July 1?
Back in stock again and I just ordered one, passing on the Cube once again. I just don’t care about the lower performance hardware and the hands free stuff seems more a novelty than a necessary feature.