So the wife just came into possession of a Fire Stick and she has been convinced by somebody that she needs to have it jailbroken (for $40). I’m fairly sure I can do it myself for free, but I don’t really see the need to do so. Or at least I certainly don’t see the need for HER to need to do so. She isn’t very technically adept, and wouldn’t know where to even go to find movies to watch that aren’t already on offer on Netflix or Amazon and such. So, does anyone have any hints/tips/pros/cons ?
What is your wife planning to do with the device that she needs to jailbreak it? I’m not trying to be snarky, I just can’t help wondering if what she wants isn’t already part of the service.
That’s exactly my concern as well. I don’t think she knows. Just curious if anyone has any ideas that might be cool that would require jailbreaking. This is for the TV in the bedroom, btw, not our main rig.
My friends have some sort of software jailbreak on their Firestick. For $40 you get some software on there that basically gives you a menu of hundreds of illegal streams of everything from CBS evening news to Movies currently in the theater. It’s the same as you going to Google and searching “stream Zootopia” and clicking on a link to watch the movie. Except I think the software organizes results for you and pulls in links to content from their preferred illegal sites. One goes down, a software update removes it and adds four more sources.
Websites for these services pass themselves off as being totally legit because “it’s not illegal to add software to a device you own.”
True but they completely ignore the issue of where the content is coming from and the fact that it is illegal streams.
It’s a very popular service to have it done. I don’t think one would get in trouble for using it (like the FBI isn’t coming after you but the content providers) but IMHO at the end of the day it’s skeevy as heck.
Yeah, it sounds kinda skeevy to me too.
What she might be talking about is adding some flavor of Kodi(XBMC) to the stick. There are plenty of YouTube clips explaining how to do that. Kodi itself is legal.
The “illegal” or “unethical” part comes with some 3rd party Kodi add-ons (IOW, NOT put out by Kodi) that connect to movies/tv shows either via streaming.
Just a reminder to all not to let the topic stray into encouragement or promotion of illegal activity. Thanks.
First, there is no such thing as a Kindle Fire Stick. There are Kindles (and Fire Tablets, etc.) and there are Fire TV Sticks. Let’s assume the later.
Second, you can’t jailbreak a Fire TV Stick. There is nothing to jailbreak. It’s a simple setting of a menu choice to allow sideloading of apps. Then you can load Kodi and a bunch of other things. Since I used mine (I now have a 2nd gen. Fire TV) mainly for watching stuff off my server, I loaded in Kodi, VLC player, ES File Explorer, etc. Of those, only Kodi needs to be sideloaded. The rest are available straight from the Amazon app store. (Kodi was briefly available from Amazon, but they banned it for being a file sharing app, which it isn’t. The real reason is that people use it instead of Amazon Video.)
Thirdly, if you mean rooting instead of jailbreaking, that’s a more complicated matter. I routinely root any device I own so I can use it the way I want. But it’s not always an easy matter and is incredibly easy to mess up. Repeat: Incredibly easy to mess up. You can “brick” your device.
If you don’t know the difference between jailbreaking and rooting and in particular don’t know why you would want to root your Stick, Don’t Do It!
Note to mods: I know of no US law broken by jailbreaking or rooting a device. There is the infamous DMCA law and relatives that prevent doing certain other things that lead to copyright infringement, etc., but these alone don’t do that. You can violate the DMCA even without rooting in many cases.
E.g., Google deliberately makes rooting quite simple on Nexus devices.
And just about all Android devices allow sideloading of apps (which in Apple-land is called jailbreaking). They do this so that developers can test their apps on devices.
Ftg, and all, thanks for the clarifications. After gasp talking with my wife, she does , in fact mean loading kodi. Which im sure I can do super easy (aka, not pay $40). I doubt rooting it will do anything for her beyond what kodi can do (tho I have rooted several devices).
Ok, well Kodi has a whole page dedicated to getting Kodi running on the Fire, including the Stick version, so you should be good to go -