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Comment by drewg123 | Hacker News Reader

But will it have YouTube?

Actually, that's a serious question. I'm looking for a box to recommend to a friend who's going to cut the cord. I think the Nvidia Shield will be better for them due to being real android tv, and because I have one and know the Android TV ecosystem better...

It looks like FireTV still doesn't have an easy way to install Kodi from the appstore, but requires that it be side-loaded.

And it looks like the Youtube app in the amazon app store is written by Amazon. The icon makes it look not not legit..

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Even as a technical person I've found it much easier to cut the cord with a few different devices. I've yet to find a single device that does it all well.

Kodi is great at file playback but the bring-your-own-hardware approach is a great way to spend movie night trying to fix a broken computer (a separate mysql backend is needed for multi kodi device sync... seriously?) I replaced my kodi boxes with rokus and plex and haven't looked back.

Roku has a nice app selection and the remote makes a huge difference in usability for non tech folks. Then again roku lacks a good built-in "airplay" feature so I have an apple tv to do that.

I'd recommend to your friend two devices. A Roku, and a device that they can "cast" from the mobile platform they use.

Shield has nearly every app you need including Kodi. And is a native chromecast box.

Side loading Kodi only takes a few minutes. I've got it on my FireTV—it's almost all I use it for, in fact.

I had a fire stick, and did the same thing. But side-loading was a pain, especially for updates. On my Shield, I get all the updates via the Play store.

I moved from raspberry pi's to amazon fire sticks and sideloading kodi is now down to a minute or so installation - including copying my advanced.xml over from a unc path so it uses the shared db. Life has been so much easier since.

Shield is still the best settop, bar none.

yes, nvidia shield works great. reliable, does all i want.

The unofficial looking Youtube app on the Fire TV and Fire TV sticks that I own works OK. I don't know how it compares to Youtube on other set top boxes such as the Shield TV though. For live streams, it doesn't show the chat section that you see when looking in a web browser. It also makes it hard to see the video comments/notes (which I usually don't care about anyway).

If he doesn't mind dropping a bunch of cash on it, Samsung Smart TVs have all the major providers (including Youtube).

I have a samsung, and I generally think that the smart tv aspect sucks. The only decently performing app is Netflix. You get a much slower, more static interface, can't load apps like kodi (meaning running a mythtv setup would be murder). AFAIK, there is no "live channels" or "HD Homerun" DVR app for Samsung smart tvs (in order to avoid the MythTV complexity)

> I have a samsung, and I generally think that the smart tv aspect sucks

It certainly does, and the remote is awful. I'm very happy that there's a setting to completely turn that feature off (which I did in a fit of rage when the TV I had just purchased for $2000 showed me an advertisement without being connected to a cable box or antenna).

I used to use an apple TV and an HTPC hooked up via HDMI. But my new Samsung TV really nailed it with their built in apps. It does Plex, Hulu, Amazon Video and Youtube. Plus I only have to use the 1 remote (which is also nice, about 10 buttons total).

Philips TVs are Android TV. Some of them don't have the Amazon App yet.

What about a Roku?

Parent mentions Kodi, which isn't on Roku at all (it's not written in Roku's Brightscript, obviously, so porting it would be a full re-write)

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