Strong 8K TV on Amazon Fire TV Stick
The device most of our customers watch on. Budget for ten minutes: five to install, and five while the guide downloads seven days of listings for the first time.
- A Fire TV Stick already on your Wi-Fi
- The Xtream login lines from your account page
- Ten free minutes, most of them spent waiting
The setup
Turn on installs from unknown sources
From the home screen open Settings, then My Fire TV, then Developer Options, and switch on Apps from Unknown Sources. If Developer Options is not in the list, go to Settings, My Fire TV, About, and press select on the Fire TV Stick line seven times. It appears after that.
Install Downloader
Search the Amazon appstore for Downloader and install it. It is a plain file-fetching tool and it is what you use to bring the player onto the stick, because the player itself is not carried in the Amazon store.
Fetch the player
Open Downloader, type the numeric code from our Apps page into the address box and press Go. Let it finish, choose Install when prompted, then delete the downloaded file when it offers. A Fire Stick has very little storage and that file is no longer needed.
Sign in with your Xtream lines
Open the player, choose the Xtream Codes option, and enter the server address, username and password exactly as they appear in your account. Capital letters matter. Take your time here, because a single wrong character produces an unhelpful error message.
Let the guide build itself
The first launch downloads the whole channel list and then seven days of programme data. On a Fire Stick this takes three to five minutes and the screen may look stuck. Leave it alone. It only happens once, and afterwards the app opens straight onto the listings.
Hide what you will never watch
Go into the player settings and hide the country groups you have no use for. Cutting the full list down to the channels you actually care about makes the guide load faster, makes search useful, and turns the favourites list into something you can navigate with a remote.
Things that catch people out
- A Fire Stick that has been powered on for weeks gets slow and starts stuttering on channels it handled fine when new. Pull the power for ten seconds before you begin.
- If the player installs but refuses to open, storage is nearly always the reason. Remove one app you never use and try again.
- The Ethernet adapter for a Fire Stick costs very little and does more for picture stability than anything else you can buy.
No subscription yet?
Activation runs on its own and finishes in about two minutes. The login lines appear on screen and land in your inbox at the same moment, so you can start this guide straight away.