I wouldn't pay extra for it. My house has 2 of them. They work okay at best for netflix and hulu. If you enjoy using your TV as a night light look no further. Unless something has changed since the last time I looked into this you don't need to root or jailbreak. I was able to sideload applications from my computer to the firestick over ADB. If you have never done that before it isn't that hard. I can find you a step by step guide. If you follow every instruction it is pretty simple. With sideloading you can manually push whatever application you want over to it. So anything you can find. Cracked apps, paid ones, or just ones that don't show up on the app store.
In my opinion I would not use this as a main way to stream movies. I've bought the following so far, chromecast, roku 2, firestick, western digital tv, a generic made in china WD TV clone, apple tv, apple mini, and $200 windows computer with wireless keyboard/mouse. Windows is the easiest and most noob friendly for anything.