[Q] Fire TV in UK

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ipxsystems

Member
Jun 29, 2007
16
0
I have an Amazon Fire TV imported from the US,,, Is it possible to use my UK Prime Instant Video account? I can link it up to my UK account (the apps seems to reflect this) but I seem to be seing US Movie/TV content. Also no way to set timezone to UK.

Any views?
 

imtiajmeah

Senior Member
Dec 7, 2004
319
292
London
I have an Amazon Fire TV imported from the US,,, Is it possible to use my UK Prime Instant Video account? I can link it up to my UK account (the apps seems to reflect this) but I seem to be seing US Movie/TV content. Also no way to set timezone to UK.

Any views?

Hi buddy i'm in the same boat as you.... If you figure out how to change the time let me know.
 

JPDeckers

Member
Apr 16, 2014
17
3
Hi buddy i'm in the same boat as you.... If you figure out how to change the time let me know.

In the Netherlands, got this problem as well. Opened the Amazon settings apk, and those few time zones are hardcoded in the app/xml, so looks that amazon doesn't have any outside US plans for now.

Sideloaded a default Android Setting apk, but switching time zones didn't stick, same as via adb shell setprop persist.sys.timezone, so think we'll need to wait for root access to make it stick.
 

fredphoesh

Senior Member
Jan 15, 2009
1,062
86
I have an Amazon Fire TV imported from the US,,, Is it possible to use my UK Prime Instant Video account? I can link it up to my UK account (the apps seems to reflect this) but I seem to be seing US Movie/TV content. Also no way to set timezone to UK.

Any views?

Hi there,
So are you saying that you have an amazon.co.uk account, but the Fire TV prime movies on your box are the USA movies? (I think that means you get about 2x as many choices AFAIK... which is fantastic. So is that true?

Also, how about NetFlix, is that UK or USA content?

tx
Mark.
 

fredphoesh

Senior Member
Jan 15, 2009
1,062
86
Everything on the FireTV is region restricted to the US. Including Prime, Netflix and Hulu. If you try from any other region, like UK or Canada as an example, you'll get an error msg when you try to load a video. The only way to get around the error is to use a VPN. So far, vpn apk's, like Hola, don't work.

Holy crap, so why are some people buying it in the UK on eBay... Some sellers saying it's UK ready...

Perhaps we'll get lucky with an Android TV announcement at Google IO.

Mark

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
 

eskay993

Member
Jun 11, 2014
37
5
Here is my experience so far...

If you use a service like SmartDNS or Unblock-US, you can watch Netflix from anywhere in the world using your UK Netflix account. No need for VPNs. The services costs an extra $5 a month but worth it. Works great on all devices, including my Fire TV.

The service also works a treat for Hulu, but the Fire TV app is for Hulu. This needs a US credit card to subscribe.

For Amazon Instant Video (the pay to rent/buy service), you need a US Amazon.com account and a US credit card. You can use a service like US Unlocked (not to be confused with Unblock-US mentioned above :)) which lets you register for a virtual US credit card with a US billing address and works great on Amazon and Vudu. Been using it a few years, but it does require a huge leap of faith to sign up for it - you need to send bank details etc for initial setup. I haven't had any issues so far, but appreciate many won't want to do this.

You can probably also get Amazon.com vouchers but have not tried this for Instant Video . Lots of sites sell them

The kick in the teeth for me is Amazon Prime and not having access to the UK service. On the Fire TV it's not an app that you launch so to speak, it's integrated into the menus. Everything that is served is the US content. Unlike Netflix, which uses the same app to server different content based on your region, Amazon has different apps for each region.

So to get UK Prime content, we need a UK version of the app sideloaded. At least that's my conclusion. The best version would be the Google TV apk (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.avod) and there are some discussion around about ripping it, but I don't think anyone succeeded. We would also need it to be the UK version of the app.

As an example, on PS3, to get UK Prime, I need the app from the US PSN store, and for US Prime you need the one from the US PSN store.

The other challenge is sideloading it. I tried sideloading this Amazon Instant APK just as a test, and I got an error saying com.amazon.avod already installed, which is the main Prime app on the Fire TV. Someone much smarter than me would need to figure out how to change the name of the app/package so it can be installed alongside each other. Even if you could, this app won't work anyway to get UK content (or even work at all with a remote), but it's one step closer if we can get two versions of the Amazon app installed side by side.

Hope that helps someone somewhere :p It's still a great piece of kit - only thing I'm missing is UK Prime.

Cheers
 
Last edited:

JPDeckers

Member
Apr 16, 2014
17
3
Here is my experience so far...

If you use a service like SmartDNS or Unblock-US, you can watch Netflix from anywhere in the world using your UK Netflix account. No need for VPNs. The services costs an extra $5 a month but worth it. Works great on all devices, including my Fire TV.

Does Netflix UK work for you? Mine (also using Unblock Us) does show the content, and can navigate, but will refuse to play movies. It will start loading but then stalls after about 40% loading.
adb logcat gives java cert errors.
 

eskay993

Member
Jun 11, 2014
37
5
Does Netflix UK work for you? Mine (also using Unblock Us) does show the content, and can navigate, but will refuse to play movies. It will start loading but then stalls after about 40% loading.
adb logcat gives java cert errors.

Hmm you're right. I've been mostly watching US and only tested accessing UK content, not playing. Tried playing and it stalls at 40%.

As a test, I tried a different Netflix apk that I found and it works fine in terms of playing the movie, but this apk is designed for touchscreen and a bit crappy to use with the Fire TV remote.

So, either it's a bug with v1.0.1 of Netflix which comes with the Fire TV, or it' an extra region check they've added, which sucks. I suspect it's just a bug/restriction of this old version.

If we can find a version Netflix apk that works well with a remote, then this would be solved. Unfortunately most results that come up are for touch screens.

Sooo close to being the perfect box! Hopefully someone can figure out a way round it.

Cheers

UPDATE: Netflix UK now works for me as I mention below.
 
Last edited:

boxst

Member
Dec 20, 2010
9
0
Unfortunately I haven't found a way around this. I am in the UK and bought a Fire TV whilst in the US. When returning none of the videos play, none of the applications load (apart from the ones I've sideloaded).

It is still useful, as I put XBMC on there but it would be great to be able to use an Amazon Prime UK account or even just set the timezone without faffing about.
 

stewiebee

Member
Apr 25, 2014
6
0
Unfortunately I haven't found a way around this. I am in the UK and bought a Fire TV whilst in the US. When returning none of the videos play, none of the applications load (apart from the ones I've sideloaded).

It is still useful, as I put XBMC on there but it would be great to be able to use an Amazon Prime UK account or even just set the timezone without faffing about.

Plex works i use it everyday on fire tv,even with the things that dont work yet in the uk for the price and gta games working great it is a brilliant box.
 

eskay993

Member
Jun 11, 2014
37
5
Does Netflix UK work for you? Mine (also using Unblock Us) does show the content, and can navigate, but will refuse to play movies. It will start loading but then stalls after about 40% loading.
adb logcat gives java cert errors.

Not sure if it's something I inadvertently did, or something that changed server side at Netflix/Amazon, but Netflix UK now works on my Fire TV! I tried US, Mexico and UK and all movies and TV shows play (no longer get stuck at 40%). Worth trying it again if you were having trouble before.

All that's left now is for the new Netflix client (coming soon later in the year) and for a way to get Amazon UK, and I'm sorted!
 

JPDeckers

Member
Apr 16, 2014
17
3
Not sure if it's something I inadvertently did, or something that changed server side at Netflix/Amazon, but Netflix UK now works on my Fire TV!

Indeed, somewhere around the last firmware update, Netflix started working! Uninstalled the sideloaded version, because this client is actually usable. Now wait for the updated one, but already really helps in usability.
 

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    I installed "Time Zone Changer" from the playstore, worked for me, +2 GMT, even after reboot.