I am looking to get a tv streaming stick, preference at available ones is the chromcast, but Amazon bring out one in a few weeks!

I want to be able to watch Amazon prime and Netflix, should i wait for the. Amazon one or is there another ones I don't know about! I read that the chromcast does and does not support prime or it wil do in the future!

Any recommendations?

The Amazon Fire stick allows you to watch Amazon Prime and Netflix , as of yet sadly Chromecast and Roku streaming stick do not have access to Amazon Prime.

Sorry if this is slightly hijacking but does anyone know if you can change the DNS codes on the Amazon Firestick to access US Netflix?

Definitely the Amazon Fire TV Stick. (Actually, the box is better, but the Stick is still a great device, and for your purposes, better than the Chromecast).
There is a review of the stick here:

Basically, when compared to the box, it can be a little sluggish at times, and the remote is horrible. Of course, the remote is a 100% better than the Chromecast's remote since that doesn't come with one. And although it is a little sluggish, it still works really well.

The AFTV has the best interface for Amazon Prime over any STB I've reviewed. Since the Netflix app is also on there, it is a no-brainer. You will also find the BBC iPlayer, STV Player and Demand 5 for free stuff, not to mention TVPlayer which has live streams.


Absolutely, and it gets even better. Unlike the Roku or most other STBs, the AFTV (Box and Stick) can mix apps from different countries - in this case, the US, UK and Germany.

So, you can not only add the Smart DNS servers direct in the device to access Netflix US, you can also add US apps that will sit side-by-side with your UK ones. That's pretty awesome really. There is a guide here.

Id rather get an android stick, far more versatile, use every app on playstore, and you can change the dns, there is an unblock-us app that makes changing regions a doddle.

and they can usually take usb devices, so plug in printers, webcams, wireless keyboards mouse, usb hard drives, install xbmc plug in a hard drive and you have a moamoth media centre that will play anything, i have one in the bedroom that conects to my humax freeview recorder in the living room and lets me watch all the content off the box right off it.

The kindle thing does look "sleek", but id much rather have the flexibillity of android.

I'm looking forward to the new Windows sticks that are coming out this year.

I can thoroughly recommend the hardware inside them.
If you don't mind something a bit bigger than a stick (although still a pretty small box) and don't mind ordering from China the mini Windows PC's available are pretty good imho and much better than any Android box I've seen.

I ordered a Pipo X7 for my dad for £65 (well £68:49 once import duties were added) and was so impressed with it I ordered another one for myself to replace my bedroom HTPC.

Is it as good a PC as the one it replaced? No, but as a client based media player its pretty damn good with the added bonus of being totally silent and having very low power consumption and being able to do general Windows work, you're not going to run Photoshop or play modern PC games on it but for general stuff its surprisingly snappy.

Mine is being used 99% of the time for Kodi/XBMC being fed media by my main PC/server and using a couple of addons plus the occasional use of the Now TV and NBC Sports Live Extra apps and it does a great job with these,
I would add that the hardware's one limitation is its de-interlacing, if your a power Kodi user it might not be for you, I've found it will handle live TV broadcasts both SD and HD ok as long as the scaling method is left on DXVA but it struggles with some more obscure codecs and higher bitrate interlaced content.

I have an android TV box and I personally think they are awful. Navigation is only easy if you connect a keyboard and mouse to it. After about half an hour I managed to sign in to Netflix but it wasn't worth the time, you can really tell the UI is meant for a tablet, not a full screen TV. This is even more noticeable when something starts playing and you can see its been stretched for the TV screen (everything looks zoomed and pixelated).

I'll now only go for devices that have been made specifically for use with TVs.

Having access to dish, direct tv and xfinity logins is a main reason i'm looking at windows or linux tv boxes/sticks.
I've heard very good things about the pipo x7 and heard it can dual boot linux and windows aswell as android if desired, i only use kodi for tv shows and some live streams so should be ok, £69 is a great price i think you just made my mind up for me as to which one i'm going to buy.

One other thing I should warn of is that the inbuilt wireless is only wireless N 150,
this should be good enough for many people but didn't suffice for my needs.
I simply disabled the inbuilt wireless and attached my N 300 USB adapter and now can quite happily stream full uncompressed blurays to it via Kodi

I normally only use wired for media it's more stable there's no rush at mo as got a good 15metre hdmi lead running from pc to tv it's quite hidden, plus my firetv and roku boxes.