excellent working ..kodi...streaming..great
345551
This system is pretty easy to use and easy to set up. I like having guides and walkthroughs, but this could be setup easily without help. I haven't tried to use the other apps on this box yet, but my friends have and they all love this system. This also much more than Kodi. It comes preinstalled with all the Apps you find on the Apple Tvs or Ruku at a fraction of the cost and the addition of FREE KODI!!!!!!! You can search the web as well! No comparison!! awesome product
3979456
After a month of usage, I love my Fire TV Stick. Although streaming, it is very good at streaming without interruption/buffering and is very lite on my internet's data usage. The voice feature of my remote works very well and easily picks up what I say. Haven't had a hiccup yet.
2397102
I love the Roku 2 Streaming Player. It took us a little more effort than we anticipated to get it set up, because the "manual" that comes with it needs to be written more precisely. But once we got it going we loved it. It has been wonderful. I highly recommend it. It is great for people who watch a lot of TV and are tired of commercials. Through the digital channels it offers access to movies, TV shows, news, streaming music, and more. The movies consist of up-to-date as well archival material and the TV fodder is also pretty current as well as archival. Another thing I like about it is if you've missed episodes of your favorite show on normal TV you can watch a whole series of episodes in the correct order so you have continuity. It also tracks what you've watched and queues up the next episode for you automatically or resumes where you've left off if you had to cut off in the middle of a show or movie. I wouldn't part with my little Roku 2 Streaming Player for anything. It has opened up a whole new world of digital entertainment.
3050119
I was previously using my PS4 for streaming, however several services are not supported by my ISP for PS4 (damn you Comcast) and several other services do not have a PS4 app.

This is a great streaming device, has all of the apps Ive wanted/looked for, and easy to use UI.  The voice search works exceptionally well.
2511954
I suppose my review of the WD TV is long overdue considering the absurd amount of use my family gets from these little boxes. I have been using WD TV units now for 5 years and can't imagine going back to the days of physical media. Once you go digital, you don't ever have to worry about discs getting scratched, broken, or misplaced. It's really fantastic. Honestly, format-shifting your physical media to digital files is the hard part - setting up and using the WD TV to watch your digital media is the fun, easy part.

First, my setup, so you have some context for my review:

- Media: Movies and TV shows ripped from digital media and encoded using Handbrake. File sizes range from a couple hundred megabytes to 20GB for very long movies.

- Network: My WD TV's are hooked into the home network via gigabit ethernet; When I last tested the wifi on these units it was too fragile to reliably stream media at the bit-rates available from blu-ray quality media, so I unfortunately I cannot comment on the wifi capabilities of the WDTV. Perhaps now that I have a better Wireless N router I could try it again, but I have ethernet running through the house so I probably won't bother.

- Storage: I set up a basic SAMBA shared drive from a networked computer and put the media there. Window 8 has a great feature called "Storage Spaces" that lets you combine multiple physical drives into one "logical" drive so that you don't have to use multiple shared drives to accommodate a large digital library. I don't use local USB drives for storage anymore, but I have in the past and it worked just fine.

General Observations:

As I mentioned above under "media", my family's primary use case is playing movies and TV shows ripped from physical media and streamed across the network from a shared drive. I have a Netflix subscription, but I've found the Netflix app on these boxes to be a little slow, so I don't use it. If Western Digital put a better processor in a future WD TV model then I might be more inclined to fire up some of their other apps more often. As is stands, I don't really use the WD TV for anything other than playing movies off of shared drives - but for that, it's 100% effective.

Multiple WD TV's: Like many homes these days, I have a couple TV's in the house and each one has a WD TV unit hooked up to it. I've never had a problem playing multiple movies at once, but that may depend largely on your infrastructure (network speed, server power, etc.) so your mileage may vary.

The UI: A few years ago there was a major overhaul of the UI. It's much nicer now, aesthetically. One minor gripe: switching between shared drives on my two servers take too many clicks. To switch between servers I have to navigate to a red button called "Change content source", select "Network Shares" then "Windows Shares" then the computer I want to browse. I would prefer to have a list of "favorite" network shares, select the one I want and have the WD TV remember how to get to the appropriate computer for me. It's a pain, but not a deal breaker by any means.

Other WD TV benefits:

- It's very portable. Loading up a USB hard drive with movies and TV shows and taking a WD TV unit with you for that rainy day on vacation is easy to do.

- Your entire digital movie/tv library is available "on demand". Swapping from one show or movie to another shows is trivial. Yes, it's the height of laziness, but sometimes lazy is ok. I work hard as a professional and as a parent - I don't want to work hard when it's time to relax!

- No more scratched/misplaced/broken media. I have two little children in the house, so any parents reading this will probably understand. The benefit of not having discs being swapped in and out of a blu-ray or DVD player with kids in the house cannot be overstated.

- It really does play anything that I throw at it. It supports all major audio and video codecs, and absolutely never skips a beat.
2356597
I cant shower enough praises for this unit - i have using this for the last 2+ years and has been a part and parcel of my daily life.  Literally used it every day to stream movies/read books ...

What is good:
 (1) Very easy to install and use
 (2) Decent mobile apps - Qfile (the file browser) is the only app I use - the other apps are not so great.
 (3) QNAP constantly keeps improving their Apps, UI.  Once big change came about on the UI about an year back and it is absolutely stunning
 (4) multiple options to connect from outside of network - they keep on innovating (like the cloudlink functionality released a few months back)
 (5) Tried connecting printers, cameras, external drives, backups, FTP, telnet, webserver ..... all of these work awesomely well

You cannot go wrong with this NAS drive.  Just Get One !
4405358
Pros far outweight the cons.

Device is pitched as "a/v streaming tablet" for kitchen, bedroom, living room, etc. It MORE than delivers on this promise. Email and some bluetooth support is currently lacking (only wireless mouse/keybd currently supported) but this will be fixed soon.

Skype is coming in next few months. Big win there.

Hardware feature:

1. 2-way infrared learning remote.

It's now my primary remote control. Layout are fairly editable but not where it s/be...this is easily fixable though. Unlike what other reviews stated...it is easy to incorporate support for new devices...you can download remote control config files from lirc.org.

2. Backlit keypad

Nice for being in bed at night.

3. d-pad and thumbwheel

Absolutely best way to scroll/page thru sites.

4. 2xUSB, 1xNTSC A/V out

An MMC/SD would be nice...but expandability is there already.

5. 20GB HD and 256MB RAM

As an engr geek...I would like to see more...but for a/v streaming and other tasks this is totally adequate.

6. i386 compatible

This means you can just download RedHat FC4 i386 binaries and they just work. They may not integrate with desktop perfectly...but works great nonetheless.

Software features:

1. Streams darn near EVERY video/audio format. Only esoteric realplayer sites don't work...yet. Everything else (Sirius Satellite, Shoutcast) work flawlessly.

2. Built-in email sucks...but I easily downloaded Thunderbird and it is now where I want it to be.

3. Desktop (tabbed folder) paradigm needs some development...but it is fine for intended tasks (streaming a/v).

4. Support for Java 1.5!! This only means something to geeks and those wanting to stream from sites which have applets (Sirius Satellite). As a java developer...this is just too cool. First time J2SE is on pda form factor.

This is an awesome device that I've been using daily since purchase. I have since CANCELLED my several newspaper subscriptions as I now read/stream from pad....this saves me just under $1K yearly for subscriptions.

The device is so versatile and perfectly sized...you will soon want to take it in car with you and mount it on dash with bluetooth gps, etc. With enhanced bt support coming...you'll soon be doing just that!
3144275
90% of my viewing is locally stored files.  Not knowing any differently, I bought a Roku device and, though it had a nice interface and fine performance, it couldn't stream from my storage device so I sold it.  In February of 2012 (almost two years ago now) I got one of these Sony units bundled with a new Sony tv and it does exactly what I need.  I purchased another for the bedroom tv.

Netflix and Amazon both have worked well for me on this unit, depending on their servers' performances (I check isitdownrightnow dot com when there is buffering, especially for Netflix), for the whole two years.  Out here in the boonies, I have a 1.5GB capped wireless connection and a Netgear N600 router,

I am looking for alternatives for a dlna player, in case there is something worth 5 stars, but there aren't any that I would spend money on as far as I can tell.  The main drawbacks, to explain my 4-star rating instead of a 5-star, is the pokey remote responsiveness and the slow start-up, and that every so often it locks up and I have to unplug it to clear whatever the problem is.  None of this is really a problem, though.  It just seems a tad clunky.  But since I can watch 8 hours of a tv show without having to press "play" in between each episode, it makes me happy.  Not that I'm a potato or anything...
3580786
Love it! Use it for Windows and Kodi and the processor is great... sometimes I have issues with windows starting up so have to do a hard reset but thats more of a software issue. Great processor... may want to upgrade to the i-7 but they didn't have it when I initialy bought this.
3608899
Awesome device! XBMC / Kodi was a major plus!  Rarely the unit shuts down on its own.  Love being able to stream videos from my phone to the TV!
3960795
Awesome streaming blu-ray player. Lots of weird reviews here. It works flawlessly. Setup was easy, typed in my wi-fi pswd and was streaming netflix, youtube, amazon instant, etc. it has about 100 channels to chose from. I love it. I can't comment much on the disc player other than it works.
3761693
Exactly as described. Very easy to set up. Streams wonderfully clear.  Haven't attempted Kodi yet, but I've heard that works really well from friends who have.  Sorry I can't go into much more depth but I haven't toyed around with it as much as I would like.

I do wish that there was an actual "off" feature. Or at least, I haven't figured out if there is a way to turn it off.  Currently you just have to wait for it to put itself to sleep.

Would be nice if it came with an HDMI cable, but it doesn't. Not a deal breaker.  I'm sure you read that in other reviews too :-).

Another friend told me of a great use for the Fire TV - one in any bedroom that you don't want to put a cable box in. I think it's ridiculous that cable providers force you to rent a cable box for every TV, even if you just want basic channels.  If you want to have something simple in each room, you can get a Fire TV (or Fire TV stick) and then stream from there.  NetFlix, Prime movies, HBO Go, etc.  Especially good idea if you get Kodi installed :-).

Enjoy!
3777453
This box works exceptionally well.  I thought the voice command and the headphone jack would be pretty useless features - but I really like both.

Quality of picture: excellent
Quality of sound: excellent
Ease of use: excellent
Ease of initial setup: excellent
Search functions: excellent
Speed: excellent
Buffering: have not seen it buffer at all.

Seriously, if you need a streaming device, this one is the best I have used so far.  I highly recommend it.
4447658
I received this a few weeks ago and used it to replace my asus oplay. There is no comparison with the oplay as far as file format play, the oplay wins hands down but when it comes to streaming and channels the oplay becomes a dinosaur when compared to the roku.  I used it wired to begin with and it worked splendid. Setting up all my accounts was a bit tedious but after set up was complete the roku streamed very smoothly.  Everything with the roku is a channel you have to install, even using the usb port you had to install a channel, I was disappointed by this but the player made up for that with all the free content and how well it streamed both Netflix and hulu+.  The amount of free content is awesome, I use the Smithsonian channel all the time as well as vevo for music video and Pandora. it's awesome.  The only real problem I have had is when I tried to set up the wireless, it would connect to the router but would not connect to the local network and kept giving me error code 14.  I messed with this for two days and finally decided to do a complete reset of the box using the button on the roku box. After the reset the wireless started working ok but from time to time drops in the middle of a show so not sure what exactly is going on but as time has gone by it has gotten more stable.  Despite having said all this I would by another one just wanted to explain all I have experienced since getting it.  I would recommend it.
324842
I have Directv.  Very easy setup and massive storage .  I'm not forced to watch or clear out old stuff (yet) to add someting I can't live wothout watching.  Lots of programs on the WD and only down to 83%.  All programs are in HD.
1662396
I like a lot about the Fire TV. I was replacing an Apple TV 2nd Generation that was jailbroken and had Xbox Media Center, now Kodi, installed on it since I bought it.

There are a lot of  positives. First it is much quicker than my previous ATV2. The menus are quicker, it starts playing video quicker and is able to stream HD video without any stutters. I can stream bluray rips and for the most part it is able to keep up just fine. I also like the ease which KODI can be installed on the Fire TV and it works very well.

A few things have been bothering me about the Fire TV. it will at time be unable to get videos to play either from netflix or amazon. I have had to restart the Fire TV probably a couple times a week. I also dislike that the Fire TV won't work with my existing Harmony Remote. Finally I wish there was a way to load KODI without having to manage the applications through the menu. (There may be a way, I just don't know it yet.)  Also I wish that airplay worked better to KODI via the Fire TV. I know that is a software issue, but it is one thing that I miss about my apple TV.

Overall I am glad that I made the switch and feel it is an upgrade. I may still build an HTPC as the Fire TV doesn't appear to pass through HD audio. However I really like that netflix and amazon video are natively supported and work better than most HTPC workarounds.
4774047
what I've seen so far I love.

on another note:  streaming takes too much of my data.  I wish you had an option to control level of streaming.  I might have to drop Prime and just watch thru Netflix / CD's.