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Comment by Aleman360 | Hacker News Reader

Was excited about this until I saw that it doesn't support Amazon Prime video.

Amazon Prime video doesn't support any TV-connected Apple or Google device. This appears to be a strategic decision Amazon has made.

For a long time they didn't support Android at all, just their fork of it on their devices. They seem to be very big on lock-in.

and yet they have Roku and Xbox apps.

Yea, bummer. I use my Xbox One because it supports everything and does Blu-ray too, but the thing uses like 80 watts while playing videos and is pretty clunky to navigate.

It's an amazon decision, not a google decision. I've complained to Amazon about this multiple times.

I get around this by just casting my phone's screen. It works great out of the box. Just cast your phone's screen, start the Amazon Prime Video app and start your show. The phone will automatically full screen and orient correctly for the TV and all audio on the phone will silence in favor of using the TV's.

Hang on, you can cast your phone screen? I understood that you could only cast a chrome-browser tab to chromecast or use an app designed for chromecast ... have I been misled? Is that a newer feature because it didn't seem to be there 9 months ago when I trialed one?

Yeah, the Chromecast app[1] will let you cast whatever's on your screen, regardless of individual app support. I used it recently, for example, to play the turn-based game UniWar on the TV in my living room.

That app works with Android TV devices, too, although there's an issue there that trips some people up. When it first launches, it will look for Chromecast devices specifically but will not pick up Android TV ones. Even so, if you thereafter select the "Cast Screen" option, your Android TV devices should show up, as my Nexus Player does.

1: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

It's a Lollipop thing.

This feature existed 9 months ago, it worked on my Nexus 5.

http://www.techhive.com/article/2982096/streaming-services/t... blech

Well, there goes my dollars. I'll stick with my Roku until they do.

What sucks is that the real losers in all this are the customers.

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