Slashdot Mirror
Amazon's YouTube Workaround on Fire TV Works Just Fine (geekwire.com)
Last month, a notification that YouTube would no longer be available through Fire TV and Fire TV Stick devices starting Jan. 1 popped up, threatening to leave a huge hole in Amazon's streaming lineup. But just last week, Amazon added the ability to surf the web and get to YouTube via a browser. But does it work? GeekWire thinks so: The result is a simple path to YouTube, circumventing Google's move to pull it from Fire TV. Web browsing probably wasn't a direct response to Amazon's issues with Google, which owns YouTube, but it provides a convenient alternative to keep the service accessible for Fire TV users. The first step is downloading one or both of the web browsers. Opening Firefox leads to this home screen with easy access tiles to both Google and YouTube. On Silk, the home screen defaults to Bing search. But as I poked around, I noticed that YouTube for TV showed up in my bookmarks even though this was the first time I opened the browser. A YouTube interface optimized for TV, the same one you would see on other streaming devices, pops up on both browsers. To sign in, YouTube prompted me to activate YouTube for TV through a phone or computer. Once that process was complete, YouTube showed the same personalized recommendations as my phone and computer.
thanks for the review. I am excited that I have to open a browser now instead of just an app. I cannot believe how efficient it is!
It's one extra click, you'll live. And bad news, odds are the app was just a wrapper for a web browser anyhow.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
While it may not be a huge deal, YouTube casting to Fire TV/stick doesn't work with this method. It was something I used, but now I can't. Wish I could, but not going to cry about it.