Bye bye Retropie, hello FireTV

HPK-de

Hello,
I have sold my RPi3 which was used as RetroPie machine on my TV days ago, when i realized what the Fire TV Box is capable of.
I just played around with it and figured out, that the box is way better then the RPi.
For me RetroGaming is mostly Dos-Gaming along with some other Platforms: Sega Genesis, C64, PSX and Amiga etc.
All this, and especially the Dos Stuff can be done way more easily with the Fire TV, which has more CPU & Graphic power by the way.
After all this box is at my TV anyway for using Amazon Prime, so i can reduce the number of devices.

The App "Magicbox", which is based on Dosbox, is simply amazing. It runs every of my 120+ Dos Games flawlessly at a very decent speed and
all my games are shown with nice boxshots.
I'm using the following Apps for the other stuff: "MD.emu Free" for Sega, Frodo C64 for Commodore 64, UAE4Droid for Amiga, and ePSXe for PSX.

All in all the Android solution is more comfortable, much more easier to configure when it comes to Dos Games (CD Mounting and stuff) and it runs very stable.

So, for me the Raspberry Pi days are done, and i'm happy that i got rid of all those linux and console stuff (I'm well aware that Android is baed on Linux).
These Apps are working out of the box, just throw roms at it ;).

Greetings from germany

Hotte

herb_fargus

@hpk-de said in Bye bye Retropie, hello FireTV:

i'm happy that i got rid of all those linux and console stuff

Then I guess it's safe to assume retropie wasn't for you ;)

lostless

@hpk-de I guess it depends on what your motive is. If playing old games is your goal, then an android box will always be far better and potentially cheaper. I like retropie to build things and i enjoy the customization of the retropie project and seeing the fruits of my labor.

Ranma

Funny, I'm coming back from the other way more now. I have a nice Android console running Retroarch very nicely indeed and I love it, but find I like the "completeness" of Retropie more. I grant you there's more setting up, but it's stunning when done and a much nicer front end than Retroarch.

The problem I have with Android, and why I prefer a Linux solution, is updates. Android is great while your OS is supported, but once it becomes old (i.e. within two years), things can get problematic. It can also be tricky getting solutions to problems with apps like Retroarch and others simply because they support such a wide range of Android OS's, although admittedly team Retroarch is awesome with legacy stuff.

It's worth bearing in mind that Fire TV is based on Lollipop, which is Android 5. We're now on Android 8. My own console is Android 5.1, and I am beginning to get concerned about Kodi and whether or not they will support that for much longer. Kodi is very actively attempting to eradicate piracy of their boxes, and one way to do that is remove support for older OS's. I don't stream myself but I do use Kodi extensively for my own library. Kodi is always up to date on Linux.

Anyway, I ramble. Keep both. :-D

glennlake

@hpk-de said in Bye bye Retropie, hello FireTV:

Fire TV

To each his own. I like the family feeling I get here as we run into problems, share solutions and generally support each other. I don't know if FireTV has the same type of support. I looks like just a plug-and-play device. I have a roku box for that.

Aliendon

RETROPIE WOOOOOOO. Love this community and every thing it brings. Lets keep making Retropie even better then it all ready is.