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Amazon Fire TV

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  1. #1

    Join Date
    Jan 2005
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    Amazon Fire TV

    The Black Friday deal had my attention to the Amazon Fire TV. What is the difference between the box and the stick? What do we need to make it work in Hong Kong? A VPN and a Prime membership? All its contents are VOD, right?


  2. #2

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    Quote Originally Posted by mingming:
    The Black Friday deal had my attention to the Amazon Fire TV. What is the difference between the box and the stick? What do we need to make it work in Hong Kong? A VPN and a Prime membership? All its contents are VOD, right?
    Difference between FireTV and FireTV Stick.
    https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custo...deId=201640900

    I bought the FireTV Stick when it was launched about a year ago with a give-away price of $19.99us. It works great. Surprisingly fast. I would NOT spring for the Voice Remote because there is an app for the ipad that turns it into a remote control that works well. You can also use your laptop to set up a watchlist that can be easily accessed from the FireTV Stick.

    Yes, you'll need a VPN service run through your router as I don't believe you can log onto your VPN via the FireTV unit. Prime videos are free on demand for members and you can pay for content that isn't free. Lots of prime music available as well. Overall, a strong entertainment solution if you can get the VPN situation squared away.
    rickyross and shri like this.

  3. #3

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    My US Amazon account offered me 50% off Prime membership at $50USD, but since I can't benefit from any of the other Prime benefits living in HK, Netflix was a better deal considering the bigger movie selection. I pay $12 a month for Netflix and a VPN so it's not that bad.


  4. #4

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    Router level VPN is ridiculously easy to setup with providers like unblock-us.com (and a couple of others that have been mentioned).

    The trick is to use a "US billing and delivery" address on your account, for your credit card.

    Netflix or Hulu (forget which one) is a bit tricky. One of them is billed through Amazon, so that is ok. The other is billed through their own system which does not accept out of country credit cards. You can buy or get someone to buy you a Netflix gift card and load your account up for a year.

    Take a look at this thread:

    https://geoexpat.com/forum/newpostinthread291690.html

    Last edited by shri; 30-11-2015 at 07:41 AM.
    huja likes this.

  5. #5

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    Jan 2005
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    For US series like Walking Dead, Vikings, which provider is better? And Router level VPN, can it be a separate profile that only for this purpose, and a normal one for daily internet use?


  6. #6

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    Vpn and DNS services are slightly different services. For Netflix, Hulu, etc you probably want a DNS service as opposed to VPN.


  7. #7

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    Jan 2010
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    Amazon works with smart DNS. I was watching The Man in the High Castle yesterday on amazon. No VPN needed.


  8. #8

    Join Date
    Nov 2015
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    Kodi

    You can also install Kodi and get everything for free without the need for VPN.

    All the latest series such as Gotham are in there, and it seems to work much better than the native Amazon sw

    ilee81 and Proplus like this.

  9. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by GStop:
    You can also install Kodi and get everything for free without the need for VPN.

    All the latest series such as Gotham are in there, and it seems to work much better than the native Amazon sw

    Yes, as bdw suggested I played with TVMC and then quickly moved onto Kodi.

  10. #10

    Join Date
    Jan 2005
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    359

    Agreed. Kodi is working a lot better, now we can watch some news channels. Although it's not live, it's good enough. Thanks!