Watch Out Chromecast: Amazon Has A Fire TV Stick

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Zaranthos

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I ordered one. I've loved my Roku 2 but I'm bitter about the lack of Youtube support for so long and now that it finally has Youtube I don't like the way it works. The Roku 2 Youtube search is terrible to use and it all just runs slow on the Roku 2 entirely because of bad design and layout. The competition is kicking Roku in the backside on hardware specs so performance will almost surely be better.
 

Evolution2001

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I ordered one. I've loved my Roku 2 but I'm bitter about the lack of Youtube support for so long and now that it finally has Youtube I don't like the way it works. The Roku 2 Youtube search is terrible to use and it all just runs slow on the Roku 2 entirely because of bad design and layout. The competition is kicking Roku in the backside on hardware specs so performance will almost surely be better.
Zaranthos, to be fair, your Roku 2 was released in mid-2011. Even by now, the Roku 3 (which I have) was released in early-2013. There's almost 3.5 years between your Roku 2 and the Fire TV. Comparing the two is somewhat ridiculous. If anything, at least make a comparison of the most recent Roku (stick). FWIW, my Roku 3 has no problems with YouTube. However, I'm primarily an Amazon Prime & Hulu+ viewer. And I use Roku's built in media player as well for streaming from my DLNA server as well as playback from my USB stick.

At $20, I'm tempted to give the Fire Stick a shot...
 

Zaranthos

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I'm not comparing the hardware of the Roku 2 with the Fire Stick. The Youtube complaint was a general complaint that it didn't exist for years even though other players had it and when we finally get one it's crap. The Roku 2 hardware is more than capable of running Youtube just fine if it's designed right which it was not. They fill the screen with useless video previews and then have a one line search box you have to navigate from beginning to end to do a search. Are you kidding me? Every other search box is multiple lines so you can get from a to z quickly but the Youtube search was one line beginning to end. Horrible. They also didn't need previews for videos filling the screen to make video performance terrible. It was poorly designed and years late.

As far as hardware goes the Fire Stick is vastly superior to anything Roku has by a wide margin. I really don't care about the hardware specs though if it works well. Youtube on the Roku 2 was an insult. I have no idea what it's like on the Roku 3.
 
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