Chromecast and Amazon... can't we all just get along??

[Razz]

So we have done away with cable/dishes here and now use Chromecast. Great little device if you want to get rid of your big cable/dish bill. In order to get all the channels like History, A&E, Fox, ESPN ect.. you still need to have a network account. My friend lets me use his email and cable account so I can access all the channels.

So I wanted to watch a particular movie last night and found it on Amazon prime. I buy it then realize.. WTF... there is no casting from Amazon! I look into it and apparently they just don't like each other and Amazon won't approve Chromecast. Hmmmmmm.... So I search on how to Cast Amazon and Chromecast has a page on their website on just how to side step this issue. They developed an extension that automatically installs into your browser then give step by step instruction to change your Amazon settings, specifically the "Web Player Preferences" from Microsoft Silver to Adobe Flash. This will allow you to cast Amazon. Nice. Or so I thought.

It appears that Amazon became aware of this and has removed the option on their "settings" menu that allows you to change the player to Flash.

That's just fucked up! I can understand Amazon not supporting Chromecast for whatever reason they want, but actually preventing people from using it is down right nasty. Why should Amazon care if I cast or not? I'm still buying their movie.

Very pissed off with Amazon for this.

I found my movie on Vudu.

 

[Kazaam]

I've been reading about Xiaomi's upcoming Android TV box and a fair number of commenters will ask if it can do Amazon, to which the response is unfortunately 'no'. Then one guy said There was an APK available from a Sony TV that had Android TV built in that people had been side loading onto the old android tv boxes like the Nexus Player, but apparently Sideloading no longer works. They say the app appears to load fine, but then has connection problems and won't play movies. Wonder if the app version is just too old or if Amazon found out about it and decided to kill compatibility.

Whatever, it does seem Amazon intentionally avoids Chromecast and (mostly) Android TV. And whilst some of those commenters said they wouldn't buy the Xiaomi due to Android TV's lack of an Amazon app, there was one commenter in particular who said it annoyed him enough that he probably would go out of his way to Just avoid using Amazon for movies... because he though it was kind of a dick move.

 

[Haywood]

Amazon specifically went out of their way to block all attempts to stream from their Android TV app unless it is running on a Sony TV. People keep finding workarounds and Amazon keeps killing them off. This pisses me off, because it is a shitty way to treat your own customers. The only real option for getting Amazon content other than Fire TV is Roku, apart from a lot of smart TVs and game consoles. This is one of the reasons I opted to pass on the excellent NVidia Shield TV and go with a dedicated Plex client likely combined with the forthcoming Roku Ultra.

 

[Razz]

Haywood, that is exactly my beef with them! They are going out of their way to stop me from casting! F.U. Amazon!

 

[Botch]

Stab them all with expired Epi-Pens!