It appears Amazon is trying to learn more about how Fire TV owners in Germany use Kodi. An AFTVnews reader in Germany forwarded me an email he received from Amazon.de asking him to complete a survey in exchange for a €3 credit. While the email says the survey is intended to measure general customer satisfaction with the Fire TV, the URL of the survey reveals the study’s name to be
I’m told the survey’s initial questions were ones you’d expect of a general customer satisfaction survey for the Fire TV, which incidentally is something Amazon sends out on a regular basis. At some point the survey asks the customer to check off their main uses for the Fire TV. Among the list of options is “Media center apps like Kodi, SPMC, or Plex.” Once that option was checked, I’m told all subsequent questions were strictly about Kodi.
The survey proceeded to ask specific questions about Kodi like what it’s used for, how much time one spends with Kodi, and whether or not Kodi is used to stream content. The survey even goes as far as to ask which specific add-ons, if any, the customer uses within Kodi. The last few survey questions ask about sideloading in general and how experienced the customer is with sideloading apps on the Fire TV.
Your guess is as good as mine as to what this means for the future of Kodi on the Fire TV. Some may see this as a sign that Amazon is preparing to blacklist Kodi, while others will interpret it as Amazon considering whether to allow Kodi into the official Fire TV appstore. All that’s clear is that Kodi is being discussed in some fashion among Fire TV decision makers at Amazon. Hopefully the recent love that Amazon has shown towards Kodi, as well as this survey, is indication that Amazon is preparing to reconsider their previous opinion of Kodi.
Update
Several people in the US have let me know that they too have received similar surveys from Amazon, so it appears the survey is not limited to Germany.
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A third option might be Amazon looking to add Kodi features/code to the platform or maybe contribute to the Kodi on android effort.
If Kodi is selling a lot of FireTVs any issues with Kodi will impact their bottom line.
I’m USA user and got the same survey for a $5 credit
How did you get it? Do you regularly get surveys from amazon?
I don’t want to open up old wounds but several topics back I voiced my (admittedly) sometimes harsh feelings towards Amazon and their “relationship” with MrMC and Kodi in general. I have to stick by my original thoughts on this whole topic. I do not believe Amazon was “showing love” towards Kodi, I believe it is a test to see how important Kodi really is to the Amazon platform. I also believe MrMC is just another step in this process (whether knowingly or not)to determine the feasibility of adding this type of media software into Amazon’s operating systems by default. Again, just my opinion.
I think you’re right! I highly doubt they were favouring Kodi considering Kodi has been a controversial app blocked by its competitors like Apple and Roku. Amazon has more to lose from Roku and others as it spends millions of producing original shows and the thought of it being used to pirate Amazon originals would be a major concern for them. So I’d encourage people to survey Kodi in an unfavourable light so they can assume that the majority of users don’t use it for pirating.
all I know is root+firetv=Kodi4Life :)
Interesting but have recently purchased Nexus Player and Nvidia Shield so not really worried which direction they take.
I got the same survey and I’m a US customer.
No kodi, No Firetv. Simples. What kind of survey do you need to get that through their S&M and PR Execs heads.
Rippig DVDs to watch with Kodi is a violation of Title I of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. 17 U.S.C. 1201, which prohibits circumvention of DRM.
It’s perfectly legal to stream content with the third party apps, if the content is hosted offshore.
This crap again… It’s not “perfectly legal”. It can be argued that you, the end user, might not be prosecuted, but the content itself is still pirated/bootleg.
@shwru980r No its not (no such Act of Parliament) and no its not (Digital Economy Act 2010), and therefore entirely factious. Assuming the world abides with US Law is in itself, factious also.
Sounds like they are considering blocking Kodi if people say the predominantly use it for Kodi and stream content. I’d encourage people to rate Kodi unfavorably to they’d be less likely to block it if they see the majority of users are not using Kodi for third party add ons
how could you ever block kodi¿? it’s imposible, dont you dare to rate kodi unfavorably…
They could put some code in the firmware to avoid installs of certain package names, simple as that, no matter if it is sideloaded.
A bit surprised they mention SPMC in the survey…
If it’s confirmed, it at least shows they’re following the matter quite closely.
I think Plex is more of surprise knowing its a media server and all. But I heard you could install unsupported apps which Plex took out, maybe thats why it was on the list. Idk I love Plex and Kodi equally I have to have both.
I am conflicted here. I see this survey as one of two things:
1.) This is Amazon’s attempt at gauging public opinion (preemptively speaking) on a block of Kodi on all AFTV devices. If the data reflects a high subpopulation of AFTV users using Kodi and presumably listing it as one of the primary reasons for getting an AFTV, Amazon may feel compelled to NOT block Kodi in future updates at the risk of alienating a rather significant portion of their customer base. Under this scenario I can only hope that Amazon uses this as motivation to make their product better rather than shut down competition (if you can even call Kodi that).
2.) This is Amazon’s attempt at gathering data on the number of Kodi users using an AFTV device in a bid to justify blocking Kodi in future updates. As noted by Elias here many times Amazon does not make much profit on hardware sales, but rather, primarily on movie sales and the like within AFTV. If Amazon, in it’s infinite wisdom, perceives Kodi to be a significant threat to this revenue stream (despite Kodi having NUMEROUS uses other than streaming illegal media) they will leverage results from this survey to justify canning Kodi in future updates.
This is a double edged sword here, guys. I can’t help but wonder what motivations Amazon has for this survey as the results can be used one of two very different ways in regard to Kodi on AFTV.
What do you all think?
Whatever Amazon is up to, if you like the FireTV, root your device!
I got the survey in the US on Friday but didn’t click it until today (catching up on my AFTVNews) and the survey is closed so I can’t add my thoughts.