Amazon Fire TV UHD 2nd generation

[embleton]

The 2nd generation Amazon Fire TV UHD has a faster central processor unit (CPU) running at 2Ghz for two cores and two at 1.6Ghz that is a slight improvement over the 1st generation Amazon Fire TV. It has 802.11ac wireless network support that does improve the time it takes for the video stream to start on connection that are fast like ours at 80Mbps downstream, it also reduces buffering issues with Kodi. It now supports 4K UHD HDMI output at 30fps maximum for those with UHD TV's with HDCP 2.2 support, and works great with our 48 inch Samsung JU6445 UHD TV (firmware 1411). The second generation Amazon Fire TV UHD requires HDCP 2.2, and even though I could not find out if our Samsung UE48JU6445 supports this copy protection standard it does work correctly connected to HDMI (MHL) port 2 on our UHD TV with 4K UHD content from Amazon Prime.

Gone is the TOSLink audio optical output on the 1st generation Amazon Fire TV, which really isn't a great loss because the majority feed their TV with HDMI and use the optical TOSLink output from the TV itself. Where the TOSLink optical output was now sports a microSD storage slot and that supports a memory storage card up to 128GB. Any application can be moved to the microSD card either manually or automatically when it is installed and storage is short on the Amazon Fire TV itself. The remote control is now wifi and this improves battery life over the previous Bluetooth remote with the 1st generation Amazon Fire TV.

We have found the new updated Fire OS 5.0.2.2 on the 2nd generation Amazon Fire TV UHD has caused problems with application that we use, with those application failing to operate correctly or reporting information incorrectly or not working correctly with UHD. Hopefully these bugs will be ironed out with future updates to the OS. SlingPlayer that we use for watching our Sky+HD box in another room in our premises would not work correctly with it continually trying to connect to the Slingbox 350.

I sideloaded Kodi 15.2 rc3 on our box successfully but was unable to get it to output 4K UHD output to our TV, which was one of the reasons we purchased the Amazon Fire TV upgrade in the first place and am disappointed this doesn't operate correctly currently with UHD content. Llama doesn't work on the later Amazon Fire TV OS for triggering an event so Kodi can be started from another application, but an alterative was found called FireStarter that is just as good for controlling how Kodi starts.

[embleton]

The SlingPlayer app on the Amazon Fire TV UHD edition now operates correctly, as it does on the previous Amazon Fire TV. And kodi 14.2 operates more reliably than before, but still has issues with UHD content through kodi.