Sunday, April 26, 2015

one box to stream them all: installing Kodi on the Fire TV

So I went evil and got a Fire TV.  True, Amazon tries hard to sell you crap at every turn, but the interface is nice, the remote is a dream, and the price is right.  Access to Amazon Prime streaming and Netflix?  Check.  The only thing it's missing is the ability to access local network content.

It turns out it's pretty easy to get Kodi (née XBMC) up and running.

  1. Download adbfire for your platform.  I used WattOS (a Debian-derived Openbox-based desktop Linux distro) and it worked just fine - all dependencies were already installed.
  2. Download the Kodi .apk for Android (ARM version).
  3. Enable "ADB debugging" and "Apps from unknown sources" on the Fire TV.  Get to them in Settings -> System -> Developer Options.
  4. Get the Fire TV's IP from Settings -> System -> About -> Network.
  5. Run adbFire:
    yo@mama $ ./adbFire &

  6. Click the "Device Setup" button at the top, and enter any description and your Fire TV's IP address, and click Save.  You don't need to change any of the other fields.
  7. Click the Connect button.  There will be no progress indicator, but after a few seconds you should see "Device connected" appear in the lower right corner of the screen.
  8. Click the "Install APK" button, and navigate to the Kodi APK file you downloaded in step 2.  The installation process will take a minute or two.
  9. Normally, due to Amazon's evil, you'd have to go deep into the settings to the "Manage all installed applications" menu in order to launch Kodi.  Fortunately, there is a workaround - we hijack an app called "Ikono TV" by installing it and stealing it's entry in the main menu.  So, search for and install "Ikono TV".
  10. In adbfire, click the "Llama options" button.
  11. Make the box look like the screenshot above.  You'll need to change several settings:
    • Check "Install Llama"
    • Tick "Link media center to program"
    • Tick "Replace program icon"
    If you want the Fire TV to launch on startup, then make those choices accordingly.  Click ok when done, and wait the few seconds for the process to complete.  The message about importing via USB is nothing to worry about, you won't need to connect anything to your Fire TV.
  12. On the Fire, go to Settings -> System -> Manage Installed Applications and launch Llama.  Click ok to get through all the first time startup messages.
  13. Navigate to the confused llama icon in the lower left and click it.  Scroll to "Import/Export Data", and choose "Import from USB storage".  I know there's no USB attachments, but this works anyway.  (I'm guessing that adbFire created some sort of virtual USB drive, loaded with the needed llama settings, but I'm not really sure.)  For me, after a few seconds, Llama exited with no message.
  14. Go back to the main menu and launch Ikono TV.  This should stutter for a half second and then actually launch Kodi!  Once you exit, the Ikono TV name and icon should be replaced with those for Kodi!
And you're done!  Don't you sort of feel bad for the Ikono TV developers?  Their app has been hijacked and parasitized by us rogue local content lovers.  Oh well, thanks Ikono TV guys!  And a big thanks to the devs who keep Kodi awesome as well!

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