In an unexpected move, Amazon has added support for NTFS USB drives to the 3rd-gen Fire TV Cube. This is surprising because no Fire TV device in the past has ever supported NTFS formatted storage drives. Whether they were a Fire TV, Fire TV Cube, Fire TV Stick, or Fire TV Smart TV, they all only supported FAT32 drives out of the box and required some complex manipulation to support any other drive format. Read more ›
The 3rd-gen Fire TV Cube is far from the first Fire TV model to officially supports external USB media, but it is the first to include a built-in media player app from Amazon that can display videos, photos, and play audio files. This is the same app found on nearly all Fire TV Smart TVs, but this is the first Amazon has included it on one of its stand-alone Fire TVs. While it’s certainly not going to replace full-fledged media players like Plex, MrMC, or even VLC, it’s definitely handy to have for quick and simple access to your media files. Read more ›
One big unadvertised but significant difference between the Fire TV Stick 4K Max and the original Fire TV Stick 4K is how each one handles external USB storage. With the original Firestick 4K, you can connect a drive using an OTG cable and access files on that drive through 3rd-party apps, but the Fire TV operating system ignores the drive entirely. With the new Fire TV Stick 4K Max, external drives are fully supported, meaning, you can mount, format, and eject the drives. Most importantly, you can also use external drives to expand the device’s internal storage and move apps to the external drive. Read more ›
Support for external storage among Amazon Fire TVs, Fire TV Sticks, and Fire TV Cubes varies considerably between models. It’s, unfortunately, not as cut and dry as knowing if external storage is supported or not. Amazon has been doing a much better job lately with consistent support on newer Fire TV models, but, with the announcement of the new Fire TV Stick 4K Max, there have been questions about how its external storage support differs from the regular Fire TV Stik 4K and other models. Here is a breakdown of all the different types of external storage support and which Fire TV models support each type. Read more ›
In Amazon’s current lineup of Fire TV models, the 2020 Fire TV Stick Lite, 2020 3rd-gen Fire TV Stick, and the Fire TV Cube (both 1st and 2nd-gen) support expanding their internal storage through the use of an external USB drive. Doing so allows you to move supported apps onto the external storage device to free up space on the Fire TV Stick and Fire TV Cube’s internal storage space. The Fire TV Stick 4K, while it does support external USB devices to some extent, does not currently support moving apps to external storage. Here are what accessories you need for external storage, instucritions for how to configure your Fire TV device correctly, and how to move apps off of the internal storage. Read more ›
One of the main benefits of Amazon’s Fire TV Edition television, over a Fire TV or Fire TV Stick, is the built-in TV tuner. With it you have access to free over-the-air channels right from the Fire TV interface. While watching live TV, the Fire TV Edition television automatically records what you’re watching so that you can pause live TV and rewind at will. By default, the television will only record 5 minutes of live TV, but if you insert an SD card into the device, the operating system will use the available storage on the card to record live TV for much longer. Read more ›
The SD Card slot on the Element Fire TV Edition televisions is treated as the primary port for external storage, since it’s the only one that can be used to store apps, however, a USB drive connected to the USB port is just as accessible from within 3rd-party apps. The only catch is that you cannot have a USB Drive connected to each of the two USB ports simultaneously. Read more ›
The Element Fire TV Edition televisions have a full-sized SD card slot, as well as a pair of USB ports, where one is USB 2.0 and the other is USB 3.0 speeds. It was expected that only the SD card slot would be used for external app storage, since that’s the way the Fire TV 2 works with its microSD card slot. I can confirm that only the SD card slot on the television is available for external app storage. The television does recognize when you connect USB drives, but warns you that they cannot be used to store apps, like the Fire TV 1 can do. Files can be accessed through either the SD card or a USB drive via 3rd-party apps, like media players (e.g., Kodi, MrMC, SPMC, VLC, etc..) or file managers, but only the former can store apps to augment the Fire TV Edition televisions 16GB of internal storage.
Amazon is selling the Samsung 64GB microSD card for $22.99. This is a good deal considering the blazing fast 100 MB/s read speeds this card is capable of. I don’t know if the improved speeds that this UHS 3 rated card is capable of would make a difference on the Fire TV 2, compared to an average microSD card, but if you’re storing apps on external storage, it’s always best to use as fast of a card as you can to reduce load times and improve app responsiveness. That’s why Amazon recommends USB 3.0 drives for the Fire TV, even though it only has a USB 2.0 port. This microSD card also comes in a 128GB version for $44.99, but those are in very high demand so are backordered for 1 to 2 months. If you’re interested in the 64GB version, get your order in quick before they too get backordered.
The Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick were primarily designed to stream media over the internet, but they can also be used to play local video files. Many users access their local video files over their home network, but if setting up a shared network folder seems too daunting of a task, it’s probably easier to just play video files off of a microSD or USB drive connected directly to your Fire TV or Fire TV Stick. Here is a breakdown of everything you need to know to play video files from an attached external microSD card or USB drive. Read more ›
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