alanchow Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 Hi guys, A few of you have been talking about using Amazon Fire TV with Kodi. After the success of Plex on the Amazon Fire TV we talked with Houselogix about modifications to their Amazon Fire TV driver to allow for Kodi launching. Well i am proud to announce that today HouseLogix has released their updated Fire TV driver that supports Kodi launching. https://www.houselogix.com/shop/amazon-firetv-control4-driver-license This should help you guys who have been held back by the difficulties of building your own HTPC's. Amazon Fire TV works extremely well with Kodi and is a nice off the shelf solution. Note that Kodi needs to be side loaded onto the FIre TV (includes the new 4K fire TV). Now you can easily browse TV shows, Movies, Photos, Music, YouTube, VEVO, TV/Radio PVR and other audio/video addon services straight from your Control4 user interface. Please follow the steps below on how to do install Kodi on the Fire TV. http://www.htpcbeginner.com/install-kodi-on-amazon-fire-tv/ Please see link below for our Kodi Full product page on Houselogix https://www.houselogix.com/shop/kodi-entertainment-center-full-xbmc FAQ Why can't i use the official Control4 driver? Unfortunately as of Fire TV OS 5.0 onwards only a single ADB connection can be made to the Fire TV. What this means is that if you use the official Control4 driver we cannot send a command from another driver to the Fire TV. HouseLogix has kindly made this possible for us through changes to their driver. Can i still use the Fire TV for other applications like Netflix or Hulu? Yes you can! Launching of other applications is still fully supported. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
msgreenf Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 Alan, Great to see this level of partnership! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alanchow Posted February 11, 2016 Author Share Posted February 11, 2016 19 minutes ago, msgreenf said: Alan, Great to see this level of partnership! We value our partnership with HouseLogix. They provide sales, support, marketing and more for us so that we can try and remain focused on developing new drivers and solutions to provide additional add-on features to Control4. Without them our SDLC would be way more slower and i really appreciate what they do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eggzlot Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 Would this replace the need for the Kodi driver? I have an Amazon Fire TV and really getting into using Kodi. Was looking how to best incorporate it into C4. I am using the Control4 fire TV driver at this point. The main thing I want to achieve is an easy way to launch. Watch > Amazon Fire Tv then going to settings, applications, managed applications, kodi its just a long string. 2 way feedback is nice on the navigators but not really required as I do not have a touch screen near the main tv viewing area, so I use the SR-250 to pick content. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alanchow Posted February 11, 2016 Author Share Posted February 11, 2016 This does not replace the need for a Kodi Driver. Much the opposite. This allows our Kodi driver to be launched on the Fire TV. I rarely use the onscreen navigator myself and actually use the SR-250's list navigator more than anything else to select my content on Kodi. Especially when i want to resume watching something. I find that this is actually quicker than using Kodi's on interface and Control4's interface to resume content. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eggzlot Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 8 minutes ago, alanchow said: This does not replace the need for a Kodi Driver. Much the opposite. This allows our Kodi driver to be launched on the Fire TV. I rarely use the onscreen navigator myself and actually use the SR-250's list navigator more than anything else to select my content on Kodi. Especially when i want to resume watching something. I find that this is actually quicker than using Kodi's on interface and Control4's interface to resume content. ah ok. so one would need both drivers to use Kodi on the Amazon Fire TV. Your Kodi driver alone is not sufficient? I was waiting for something to be resolved with houselogix and after so this was the first driver I was going to purchase (Kodi full) for my Amazon Fire TV. Previous to you releasing this driver, what would have the Kodi driver + C4 Fire driver allowed me to do (and limits) vs what I'd get by swapping out the Amazon Fire TV driver for the Houselogix one? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alanchow Posted February 11, 2016 Author Share Posted February 11, 2016 30 minutes ago, eggzlot said: ah ok. so one would need both drivers to use Kodi on the Amazon Fire TV. Your Kodi driver alone is not sufficient? I was waiting for something to be resolved with houselogix and after so this was the first driver I was going to purchase (Kodi full) for my Amazon Fire TV. Previous to you releasing this driver, what would have the Kodi driver + C4 Fire driver allowed me to do (and limits) vs what I'd get by swapping out the Amazon Fire TV driver for the Houselogix one? You cannot utilise our Kodi driver in conjunction with the official Control4 Amazon Fire TV due to limitations on the Amazon Fire TV firmware. Hence why we had to partner with Houselogix to bring this update. You need both drivers if you want to utilse Amazon Fire TV outside of Kodi. If you use our Kodi driver alone you have to make sure that the Amazon Fire TV always has Kodi up and running and you cannot exit the app. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mandiola Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 Alan, Do you know what the differences are between the Houselogix Amazon Fire TV driver and the office C4 driver besides this added feature? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alanchow Posted February 11, 2016 Author Share Posted February 11, 2016 11 minutes ago, mandiola said: Alan, Do you know what the differences are between the Houselogix Amazon Fire TV driver and the office C4 driver besides this added feature? I am not sure to be honest. We can't get the Amazon Fire TV here in Australia. You should probably contact Houselogix to ask them as they would be the best people to discuss it with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mandiola Posted March 22, 2016 Share Posted March 22, 2016 On February 10, 2016 at 6:00 PM, alanchow said: I am not sure to be honest. We can't get the Amazon Fire TV here in Australia. You should probably contact Houselogix to ask them as they would be the best people to discuss it with. Just wanted to comment that I tried the houselogix Fire TV driver and to me it is far behind the official driver. The main things I like about the official driver are the mini drivers to launch Prime Video, Netflix, Etc. With the houselogix driver you have to pay another 3rd party for these (which there are a very limited amount) or program a button on a remote which to me doesn't cut it. There also doesn't seem to be a "Prime Video" driver anyways, so to get back to the main Amazon fire menu from Kodi/Netflix/etc, you have to hit the menu button on the remote instead of finding it in the Watch list which be confusing. Do you foresee any integration with the official driver? (crossing my fingers as I would love to use your driver but having to use the houselogix driver is a deal breaker for me) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alanchow Posted March 22, 2016 Author Share Posted March 22, 2016 26 minutes ago, mandiola said: Just wanted to comment that I tried the houselogix Fire TV driver and to me it is far behind the official driver. The main things I like about the official driver are the mini drivers to launch Prime Video, Netflix, Etc. With the houselogix driver you have to pay another 3rd party for these (which there are a very limited amount) or program a button on a remote which to me doesn't cut it. There also doesn't seem to be a "Prime Video" driver anyways, so to get back to the main Amazon fire menu from Kodi/Netflix/etc, you have to hit the menu button on the remote instead of finding it in the Watch list which be confusing. Do you foresee any integration with the official driver? (crossing my fingers as I would love to use your driver but having to use the houselogix driver is a deal breaker for me) We asked control4 for this and unfortunately they decided that it is not in their interest to integrate 3rd party drivers. They did provide code for us to launch Kodi on the Amazon Fire TV but as of OS 5 on the Amazon Fire TV you can no longer utilise multiple connections on the Amazon Fire TV. As such only one device or driver can control it at any time. This is why we decided that we would partner up with HouseLogix as they were more accomodating in making changes in their driver to make integration possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevind222 Posted March 26, 2016 Share Posted March 26, 2016 Hi guys, Is it possible to load Kodi off the SR260 remote via amazon fire tv 4k? looking at purchasing this box and pretty new to control4 so go easy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
msgreenf Posted March 26, 2016 Share Posted March 26, 2016 Hi guys, Is it possible to load Kodi off the SR260 remote via amazon fire tv 4k? looking at purchasing this box and pretty new to control4 so go easy. Yes it is possible Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kidsat Posted March 28, 2016 Share Posted March 28, 2016 So can you run the houselogix firetv driver with kodi full and still use the firetv mini drivers like Netflix? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alanchow Posted March 28, 2016 Author Share Posted March 28, 2016 1 hour ago, Kidsat said: So can you run the houselogix firetv driver with kodi full and still use the firetv mini drivers like Netflix? Yes that is the whole idea behind it. Using the HouseLogix driver with mini drivers that you purchase from the website along with our Kodi full driver. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonas Ciabis Posted April 12, 2016 Share Posted April 12, 2016 I installed Kodi full with amazon fire driver from houselogix and i cannot playback from control4 if the amazon fire is not with kodi open. I have to setup something else to allow playback in any situation (netflix, or any other app from amazon fire). Thanks. I attach the connection screens. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alanchow Posted April 12, 2016 Author Share Posted April 12, 2016 Please ensure UI Selects Device on the Kodi Full driver is set to True. This will make the Fire TV driver switch inputs (and as such launch Kodi). If you have any further problems please submit a support ticket to Houselogix. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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