I got the Fire Stick yesterday and played with it a bit.
There are certain apps that you can install by going to the apps menu. The apps are not organized well, and it is not clear to me if those are all of the apps that are available.
There are a few DLNA renderer apps - I can tell you that without these apps the First Stick is not seen on the network as a DLNA renderer. However, since the apps were not free, I didn't install any of those so I can't say how well they work.
One of the apps available that is free is Allcast, which is made to work with the Android Allcast app -
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...tta.cast&hl=en. As I have Allcast on my Android phone and tablet, I installed that app on the Fire Stick.
It worked fine - I could stream local content from my phone or tablet to the Fire Stick. I could also stream videos that I had uploaded to Dropbox to the Fire Stick using the Allcast interface.
As an experiment, I created a local hotspot using my Android phone, and logged the Fire Stick into that. I then logged my Nexus 7 tablet into the same hotspot network I had created, and turned off cellular data on my phone. The result was that the Fire Stick and my tablet were both on the phone hotspot network,
but there was no internet connectivity.
I was able to stream local video from my Nexus 7 to the Fire Stick using Allcast, without the necessity of being hooked up to the internet (unlike the Chromecast.)
As a further experiment, I powered the Fire Stick off and then on again to see if it could power up and attach to the network when there was no internet connection on the internet - it did connect, gave me an error message, but was able to play local media from my Nexus 7 just fine.
Apparently one can sideload Android .apk files onto the Fire Stick using the directions here:
Sideload FireTV. I believe some have had success with XBMC/Kodi, although I'm not 100% certain that people have been successful with the stick (as opposed to the box.)