Got my Fire TV Stick this week, spent most of last night setting it up for XBMC (Kodi) and Limelight (streaming steam games). My Plan was to replace my huge a$$ HTPC with this thing, add Steam Streaming functionality, lower footprint, etc, but not sure that's going to happen.
XBMC/SPMC video quality is too poor for my eyes. libstagefright and the MediaCodec API both have problems. In SPMC, both are very pixelated/blurry, contrast is garbage, color tones are washed out. In XBMC, libstagefright has the same issues as SPMC, mediacodec skips terribly on everything (I do not have any content below 720p). There's some other settings you can do in advancedsettings.xml that I'll have to try, but I don't have high hopes for video quality with the current ARM version of XBMC/SBMC.
Plex is an option, and I have it setup on my server, but their forums are full of complaints of stutterring with Plex's transcoder and FireTV, so not sure it's worth paying for plexpass or 5 bucks to test.
LimeLight works OK on 720p/30fps, but anything higher and it has a tough time. I'm also still on a b/g router, so take that into mind (although the router is inches from the FireTV Stick and from what I understand max throughput on FireTV is 20MB/s, IIRC). Plus you are limited on controllers you can use (no USB).
I don't have a Fire TV set top box to test with, but in my opinion, you're always going to be better with a media center on your LAN. Granted I don't think that wouldn't fix my issues wanting to use XBMC or Plex. I'll probably end up changing my HTPC from OPENelec to XBMCbuntu with Steam and the Advanced Launcher in XBMC.
Prime content and other apps over the internet work great, video quality is decent, no buffering/stuttering issues. Audio quality seems decent, although I haven't sat and disected it as much. I think this is a good device for those that want
Their screen casting needs to expand to more than Fire devices. It would be nice to use it as a second screen or mirror my laptop. There's a couple apps that may work, vnc, splashtop, iDisplay, but really this is something that should work out of the box.
EDIT:
Looks like those advanced settings might have fixed it, althought I did have some issues with large files (BD rips).
here's the settings if anyone is curious.
<video>
<stagefright>
<!-- -1 is default, 0 is never used this codec, 1 is always use this codec, bypassing blacklist -->
<useavccodec>1</useavccodec>
<usevc1codec>1</usevc1codec>
<usevpxcodec>1</usevpxcodec>
<usemp4codec>1</usemp4codec>
<usempeg2codec>1</usempeg2codec>
<useswrenderer>false</useswrenderer>
</stagefright>
</video>
Pulled from here:
http://www.freaktab.com/showthread....elerated-Decoding-What-works-and-what-doesn-t
