Difference between Kodi and Fire Stick

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Those who remember managing CDs and DVDs will appreciate the advantages of having a digital media library, without racking and stacking discs, swopping them out, and keeping them unscratched and clean.

Today, with such a wide variety of movies and music, there are a lot of choices when it comes to apps, platforms, and devices that can store, and help manage access to local and online media content.

Difference between Kodi and Fire Stick

What is Kodi?

  • Kodi is a free, open-source, media center software application specifically designed for home networks to manage storage, sharing, and the display of content across multiple devices.
  • Out-of-the-box content is not provided and accessibility to online content is supported, through third party add-ons required for online/live streaming services, as well other features to extend the user experience.

What is Fire Stick?

  • Amazon’s Fire Stick (like Roku) is part of a new range of electronics known as “Streaming TV Sticks” that provide high performance accessibility to online media content, with hardware specifications starting from 1GB memory and 8GB for storage.
  • It is a portable device (not much larger than a flash drive), used to transform most digital TVs into Smart TVs using an HDMI connection. It has a separate remote control and promotes Amazon Instant Video as the default service to access online content.

Similarities

  • Kodi and Fire Stick allow access to content such as videos, music, movies, and images, between connected devices.
  • Both have user-friendly interfaces to manage the catalog of content, however Fire Stick provides a more graphically rich interface.
  • Kodi can be installed on the Fire Stick as a media manager application.

Difference between Kodi and Fire Stick-1

The Main Difference between Kodi and Fire Stick

  • Fire Stick is a portable, high-end performance device manufactured by Amazon to provide high speed online access to media and live streaming. It has a separate remote control, whereas Kodi is a software application and needs to be manually configured on a device to be used as a remote control.
  • Like Fire Stick, Kodi manages media libraries, but it does not distribute any related hardware like Amazon.
  • Kodi supports remote functionality but requires additional add-ons to extend to online services, whereas Fire Stick provides access to media content instantly, based on purchased bundles.

Distributed Content

  • Kodi is versatile and can run on many platforms but does not come installed with any access to content, which is populated manually by the users.
  • Fire Stick is a streaming media player, to manage and play movies, music, games online with the ability to manage locally stored media too.

Summary

Amazon Fire Stick is bleeding-edge technology for a single, portable device to provide online streaming and media access and sharing (at a cost), whereas Kodi is free, open-source software to manage media within a home network environment.

Kodi was initially used by more technically minded users who could customize media players on platforms other than Windows or Apple, but it is becoming a lot more mainstream.  It may seem to be a fairly basic app but there are powerful functions and features available in its’ simplicity.

Although the Fire Stick is Amazon-centric, it is customizable for favorite channels with several advanced features that cannot be compared with Kodi’s basic interface.

Both offer a cord-cutting service to steer away from traditional cable services.

Author: Gillian Douglas

Content Developer specialized in video production and editing, creative and technical writing, logo and web design, UI design and software testing.

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