The Top 4 Essential Fire TV Apps

Getting started with your Amazon Fire TV may be a daunting task. Outlined below are the most essential Fire TV apps you’ll need to be on your way to consuming media. As with any new tech gadget you get, you want to get right to modding or tinkering with it. Luckily if you’re looking to tinker with your Fire TV, I’ve got you covered with 4 essential apps, plus a little extra. Whether you are looking to stream your local content from your phone or NAS, or you want to stream from the cloud, you’ll be set with the below apps.

Some of them cost a few dollars and some of them are free. You’ll also notice some may be free, but come with a subscription. Either way the below list should get you started and keep you going for a long time. Note that I haven’t outlined any games as this isn’t a game-centric site, more media and media player related.

Right now lets get to it.

1. Netflix

Yes, Netflix is #1. Of course it is. It’s probably the most used app on the Fire TV. Like mentioned above, this app is free, but will need you to have an active subscription for you to use it.

2. AllCast for Fire TV

AllCast lets you send photos, videos, and music from your Android phone to your Amazon Fire TV, it’s practically magic. This is essential to anyone who has any images, videos or anything on their Android phone they want on their TV.

3. Plex

Plex doesn’t need much of an introduction. I’ve written about it many times here, and I absolutely love it. Anyone who has movies or TV locally on their network (or remotely even) can take advantage of everything Plex has to offer. A downside is though is you need to have the Plex server running on your NAS, computer, or remotely.

4. XBMC

XBMC doesn’t need much of an introduction either. If you want a great front-end to your media collection then XBMC can display it all beautifully. There is a little bit of work getting it installed, but once it is, you’re golden. This has an advantage over Plex though, you don’t need to have a server back-end to connect to. This will play pretty much any filetype you throw at it without needing to be transcoded.

Alright so this list is great but I figured I should add some more.

Honorable Mentions

• Pluto.TV – With this app you can browse 100+ HD channels with 24/7 hand picked content. Great for when you just want to turn something on and not have to worry about ‘choosing’ anything
• NFL Sunday Ticket – Pretty self explanatory, NFL stuff.
• Pandora – Stream your favorite music instantly anytime, anywhere

Hopefully this list helps you out, and gets you going down the path of being able to play any media file imaginable on your Fire TV, or stream the content you want to watch.

Thanks!