Fire TV Stick vs Nexus Player

[tman 47]

I've recently bought a Nexus Player and Fire TV Stick to see how these devices are possibly going to change the way we view media. Only had them a couple of days, but have some initial thoughts. Be interested to know what other owners feel about them;

 

Fire TV Stick.

Pros: Amazing amount of power for such a small device. Slick UI. Very good pic quality for Amazon Prime/Netflix services (but no 4k support, no real surprise there). Remote quality is ok, and Android remote app is pretty cool and works well. Emby UI is very nice and works well. Congrats to the devs. I'm sure it will only get better in time. Cons: Emby pic quality very soft, primarily because of transcoding I guess. I hate transcoding - I'm surprised these devices can't natively decode the streams. Is this a limitation of Emby, or the FireTV? There'a also no DD/DTS passthrough that I can see. Audio comes through as stereo PCM. Can't really watch 1080P/FLAC MKV's - too much buffering, and FLAC audio isn't supported, so no sound. App store seems limited at the moment.

 

Nexus Player

Pros: Tiny, powerful, very slick UI again. No 4k support, but pic quality very good none-the-less with Prime/Netflix. My Nexus is connected through my amp, and I do seem to get full multi-channel audio, so that's a plus. Emby integrates very well into the Android TV UI. You can see media you've played directly in the main menu rather than having to open Emby, so it's pretty seamless. Google remote app is pretty good, and it also integrates with Android Wear, which is nice. Cons: Android TV still needs some work. It can be a little rough (my Nexus updated to 5.1.1, so it's bang up to date). Transcoding again rears it's head making the pic quality soft. Really don't know why we can't have local decoding (unless I'm missing something). No ethernet port,unles you buy a USB to ethernet adapter.

 

Finally, this is a comment that affects both devices. They won't auto-switch refresh rates to match the video source. Everything seems to play at 60hz on my 4k TV, meaning either judder, or in the case of 24P movies, they look processed and more like TV than movie.

 

Lots of potential here anyway, and good to see Emby leading the way. Love the new Emby UI on both devices (they're pretty much the same). At the moment though, Emby classic still gives the best pic quality, and my setup switches refresh rates on the fly. I was able to test both devices, as we subscribe to Amazon Prime and Netflix.

 

[ebr 14912]

A bit of an unfair comparison as you should really compare the NP with the true Fire TV instead of the stick.  If you do that, in my opinion, the Fire is a slightly better device - even if you don't use Amazon services.

 

The only thing that is better about the NP is the main menu interface as the Fire bombards you with all the Amazon stuff and pretty much hides everything else.  The Fire, however, appears to be more reliable with playback.  Not that the NP isn't reliable, just that the Fire seems to have an easier time of it even though it is on a much earlier version of the OS.

 

As for picture softness - I don't see this at all on my 65" Panny Plasma.  I cannot tell the difference between playing on one of these devices and playing through MBC.  Picture quality appears identical even though the streaming boxes are dealing with transcodes.  I have my bitrate set to 30 in the app and the NP is only about 20' away  from the WAP (through one wall).

[technolengy 0]

This is something I've noticed on my nexus player as well -- but I was just doing some testing and noticed it's really hard to pinpoint when/why this is happening. Two files from the same TV show, both have the exact same source stream per avprobe. 

 

Stream #0.0(und): Video: h264 (High), yuv420p, 720x404 [PAR 1:1 DAR 180:101], 1029 kb/s, 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 24k tbn, 47.95 tbc

 

Video 1 plays back on my nexus player in what tman refers to as the "soft" view (logs from emby server mention the file is being transcoded). I'm perfectly happy with this result. The more confusing one is:

Video 2 plays back on my nexus player in a higher than 23.98fps frame rate (jittery hyper-realistic view). Logs from the emby server show *zero* signs of this file being transcoded and when I play this exact file back on my laptop (mediabrowser web client) it looks like Video 1.

 

My TV is a simple 720 HD TV if that matters at all!

 

Happy to post more logs or avprobe details, etc etc -- just want to keep it simple until perhaps I can be pointed to the likely culprit here  (in addition to the fact that this was more a review post and I don't want to hijack it too much with a bug report!)

 

To echo tman again: Emby (with the release of the android tv client) is absolutely fantastic!

 

 

 

Finally, this is a comment that affects both devices. They won't auto-switch refresh rates to match the video source. Everything seems to play at 60hz on my 4k TV, meaning either judder, or in the case of 24P movies, they look processed and more like TV than movie.

 

Edited May 3, 2015 by technolengy

[Macburp 109]

As for picture softness - I don't see this at all on my 65" Panny Plasma.  I cannot tell the difference between playing on one of these devices and playing through MBC.  Picture quality appears identical even though the streaming boxes are dealing with transcodes. 

 

Not my experience. For HD programmes the PQ on the NP is very good, but I do see slightly blown out highlights and occassionally a bloom around moving images. MBC manages this better. For SD content the NP is worse than MBC, I can clearly see jaggies in the picture resolution. I may tinker with the bit rates and see if I get any improvement. I'll also concede that the PQ on my 50" Phillips TV has some issues of its own, so that may also be a factor. 

 

Should also say that these issues are minor and don't really detract from enjoyment of the device. I'm running wireless and about 12 inches from the router.

[CBers 6771]

I've transcoded a lot since MB3 was launched and I can't see much/any difference of PQ between the NP, FTV or my Roku/Now TV box.

 

Admittedly my TV's aren't as large as quoted above, so perhaps that's a reason why.

[Macburp 109]

I've transcoded a lot since MB3 was launched and I can't see much/any difference of PQ between the NP, FTV or my Roku/Now TV box.

 

Admittedly my TV's aren't as large as quoted above, so perhaps that's a reason why.

 

@@CBers, can you compare to MBC or MBT at all? I'd expect MBC to be the gold standard of PQ (after all, it's the original client), so for one of the small boxes to do as well as MBC would be rather excellent.

Edited May 4, 2015 by Macburp

[CBers 6771]

I can't compare, as I don't use MBC or MBT.

 

The Samsung Smart TV app direct plays without transcoding and on the same (46") TV I have my Nexus Player connected.

 

I'm not sure there's any difference in the PQ.