I don't imagine anyone else is on Lovefilm still. Anyway, it's closing, as you may have seen. This is sad for us, as we watched a whole load of movies over the years that are simply not available on streaming anywhere, so this is a bad thing.
A little poking about reveals there is one very similar DVD rental service in the UK, as far as I can tell, and they are now being swamped with Lovefilm patrons wanting to sign up. So if anyone cares, it's
www.cinemaparadiso.co.uk/
As a "thank you" for being a Lovefilm member, we also got a code to let us buy an Amazon Firestick with Alexa for £15 off, so £25. I decided to try it.
It arrived today, and with much pain I've got it working. I have to say it's distinctly underwhelming, especially as the advertised Spotify support actually isn't really as you might think you can't, for example, ask it to play anything by voice. Very poor, that bit.
All seems a bit feeble, and half the time tells me my query returns no results or it can't do what I want it to anyway.
Anyone else got a Firestick and had any success with it?
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I have a Firestick but it doesn't get used much. I have no Amazon account but I have used Netflix on it, also had a peek at some of the stuff you can get on Kodi, but I gather the sources are drying up since that's been declared illegal.
I mainly only watch terrestrial channels, and have never hired a DVD in my life as I don't really enjoy watching films enough :-)
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Firestick good. We have two. Not with Alexa. Much faster for accessing catch up apps than the Sony smart TV.
Channel 4 now has a habit of screening Episode 1 of Scandi-noir series, which my wife likes, and the rest are on All4, the catch up service. We found some other complete 'box sets' on there too, including series 2 of Dicte which hasn't been on broadcast as far as we knew.
Do you have Prime? There are some OK free films, and other stuff, plus a lot more you can pay for.
You have to download and install the catch up apps to the Firestick but it's easy.
Edit - I installed Kodi after it was discussed on here, but I couldn't get it to do anything useful. I'd forgotten about that.
Last edited by: Manatee on Wed 16 Aug 17 at 19:07
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Before we go too mad mentioning what Kodi can and can't do, there are plenty of useful hints and tips on youtube and the like (and some not quite helpful).
Try looking up a contributor on the tube called "All Things Tech". He's not one of these mouthy American types that loves the sound of his own voice. He tells you what you want to know without all the unnecessary flannel, and he provides regular updates to what's going on in the world of Kodi, and more importantly the best repositories to install.
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Yea, we have Prime video as well as Netflix. And I put the iplayer on easily enough.
But it's more the "bringing it all together" aspect that disappoints. I had the impression that you say "find me movies with Michael Caine in" and it would show you movies from all,sources it knows about.. Well, you can, but the results are not from all sources, and some don't have Michael Caine in. Change the query to "actor Michael Caine" and you get a different selection. It's a bit weird.
Ask it for the humidity, it tells you the temperature. Ask it what's on tv, it has no idea. Ask it for movies only on Prime, it has no idea.
Get into the iplayer, or Spotify, you can't use voice to find things. You have to painfully enter characters using the remote. Yuk.
There is an app, but that doesn't let you use the iPad keyboard either.
It's all a bit "not quite" for me I think.
Hmm.
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It will learn, and you will learn to use it. Its a bot after all, you need to think bot.
Don't give up yet
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>> There is an app, but that doesn't let you use the iPad keyboard either.
Are you referring to the Amazon Fire TV App?
Both my iPhone and iPad's keyboard work fine with the App. Saves having to use the cumbersome remote to enter any searches.
Sorry if this is teaching Granny to suck eggs, but to access the keyboard function on the App, click the icon in the top RH corner.
lh3.googleusercontent.com/ZGTLVnZ-pU_NrPIFVRp7bKQ1kN5Nzvi1rl4mafHB1Di5eYwLXq5HUq6EjOHolGyKJvg=h900
Last edited by: VxFan on Thu 17 Aug 17 at 02:16
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It is that app, yes. And yes, you can drop the keyboard as you say. But typing on it does nothing on the stick. It still only responds to the remote. The rest of the app -tap, slide - works fine.
I'm beginning to discover that Alexa behaves differently according to whether you have an Echo, a Fire Tv or a Firestick. I suspect the apps may be the same.
Even the Alexa app is annoying. It works in that it allows you to change all your settings happily, but if you choose "alarms" for example, it says they don't work on this device. Similarly, you can set Spotify to be your default music player, and it asks for your Spotify credentials and logs in fine and ticks all the boxes and all is well, until you actually say to Alxa "play" anything st all. She smugly then says "Spotify is not supported on this device", despite there being a Spotify logo on the box and on their sales website.
So to get any music you have to stick with Amazon music. Which promptly pops up the music it would have played and asks for a subscription please, even though I have Prime music.
Ask for opera on Tunein radio. "Sorry, can't play genres from Tunein". Ask for radio Opera from Tunein and its fine.
All clunky, it is.
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I thought a Firestick was an aerial for CB radio.
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Cinema Paradiso has about 80,000 films against Lovefilm's approx. 60,000, so that will be the best swop when Lovefilm finally ceases.
I use Amazon Prime on a Firestick on an old TV and Amazon's streaming service on a new smart TV, both without special problems beyond the problem of navigating vast quantities of junk material. Directed searches are much easier with Lovefilm.
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We just use 123movies! - so much easier! ;-)
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>> I thought a Firestick was an aerial for CB radio.
I went to the Firestik Antenna factory in Phoenix Arizona, invited there by the owner Rick "two pistols" vincent who I met over here when I was flogging his wares.
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We've got a Firestick and subscribe to Prime, it offers a good selection of viewing when we want it.
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>>I went to the Firestik Antenna factory in Phoenix Arizona, invited there by the owner Rick "two pistols" vincent who I met over here when I was flogging his wares.<<
Ten-four, good buddy.
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Lovefilm and Firesticks - smokie
