Amazon rolling their own OS for TV add-on devices instead of the re-skinned Android TV OS they've been using until now basically means I won't consider their devices any more. The last thing I need is yet another non-standard moving target to support in my house. Which is unfortunate because I bought their catchily-named "Fire TV Stick 4k Max (2nd Gen)" and, once you de-cruft the advertising riddled OS and sideload standard Android TV apps (eg SmartTube, Plex), the hardware is decent at a fair price (~$50). IMHO, all the broadly available TV streaming devices from major manufacturers are under-powered but the more recent, higher-end ones like the Fire TV 4K Max and Google Chromecast (aka "4K Streamer") can be basically usable once de-crufted.
Unfortunately, the only more powerful alternatives are from offshore manufacturers and thus have spotty Android TV support and may not be "authorized" (ie whitelisted) by all encrypted streaming apps (Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, etc). It's bizarre that the most powerful dedicated TV streaming device available today is by far still the NVidia Shield which is essentially a 2015 era design (it got a very minor refresh in 2019 https://androidtvnews.com/nvidia-shield-differences/). It sucks because there are a lot of useful things a TV streaming device could do if it had a little more CPU/GPU headroom (AI upscaling, de-mosaicing, casual and retro-gaming).
I'm wondering if this is what they themselves use for developing the Prime Video app? At least on LG, it's by far the slowest, laggiest and most broken app our family sometimes use.
My information is largely out of date, but Vega is aimed squarely at Fire devices. I expect LG devices largely use the web based Prime Video app that runs on most living room devices.
LG TVs capabilities and performance from an app developer perspective is... not great.
> LG TVs capabilities and performance from an app developer perspective is... not great.
Yet every other app on the TV seems to work just fine, with minimal latency and smooth animations. YouTube, HBO, Jellyfin, Netflix, Rakuten even the Vodafone TV application runs smoother, and it's generally the worst of the apps (sans Prime).
It's not the tech for the most part... it's how Amazon is using it. For comparison, Netflix uses React and React-Native as does Facebook and their apps perform pretty well.
> It's not the tech for the most part... it's how Amazon is using it
Yeah, so I mean if Amazon then developers their own framework + OS on top of React Native, how well do we think that'll go, if they're unable to use things well?
This is exactly what I've been wondering... The developer page doesn't really provide much insight into things either. Other than their development environment is based on React Native...
After skimming TFA, I came here wondering the same thing... what is it and how is it different than Android, Linux or other alternatives. I realize marketing writers think they must always lead with the usual vaguely positive puffery but it has no concrete meaning and contains no actionable information.
I wonder if the Vega stuff will be much better. There's really nothing to like about the Fire TV sticks.
I bought the 4K Max thinking it might be the best option for 4K streaming from all of the major providers as an upgrade for my aging Mi Box (3, I think); aside from the home screen being majority advert, the AV sync is constantly out and differs per-app, so changing it for one makes another worse, WiFi signal is poor and the whole thing is only "acceptable" performance wise.
I suppose Amazon is subsidising the pricing, the the advert laden home screen is a given, but AV sync when it's plugged directly into the HDMI port on the TV is appalling. The Prime Video app on it is disgracefully slow to input and browser, but in that department I find Netflix is really the only app that does perform well on the various TV devices I've tried.
At one point, I thought I wanted an Android TV box, but I realise now that I really don't care so long has it has all of the major streaming apps and performs well (a half decent remote is a must too).
Apparently the only redeeming quality for FireTV Sticks is the ease of piracy. Easily flashed with Kodi or whatever with all the pirate streams pre-configured. I had a FireTV Stick once and never again, their OS is some franken-android monstrosity.
They're a bit overpriced, but I've been exceedingly happy with Shield TV (Pro) boxes since they first came out... all the major streaming services are supported with full res as well as Kodi for lan and most other apps direct or side loaded.
I'm able to playback H.265 and AV1 video content at 4k@60 without any issues.
I'm not a software engineer, but it simply blows my mind how shitty most of the streaming apps are. Is it really that hard to serve videos? How is Netflix so good at it? I guess apple tv is pretty snappy too. Surely there's not some deep hidden technical secret that others can't figure out, at least these days. I know back in the day auto-scaling and such was high tech, but isn't it standard technology now? Is it simply that they don't want to spend money to get good engineers? Poor management? It seems like serving videos to people smoothly should be a solved problem. And that's not even the only thing they suck at, the navigation within the apps suck. Or fast-forward/rewind functionality - some of them only have one speed or can only increment 30 seconds at a time. Or why can't I reset a show easily if I want to rewatch it? These are all doable things.
Ignoring the missing functionality, I can see one possibility being that the TV's built in computer is just too weak to process video? Would I better off buying a mini-PC to run all of the services off of?
But what seems like the most obvious explanation is that they know they can get by with it because they have exclusive rights to whatever show you're trying to watch.
I own multiple FireTVs, Google’s Android TV, and an Apple TV and for almost everything I do the AppleTV is far ahead.
The only thing the FireTV had as an edge was the Xbox game streaming app which worked fine over WiFi6E. Otherwise it was absolutely ad-ridden, poor UI/UX, and Amazon’s apps suck on any platform. Since I no longer use the Xbox stuff, the stick and the older versions I have line the bottom of some drawer.
The Android TV turned out be almost as ad ridden as the Fire Stick and no obvious outstanding features. Works ok though. I wanted it to sideload some TV apps from another country to stream those TV channels. But the Android apks didn’t behave well on Android TV so into the drawer it went.
The AppleTV can’t run those apps either, they’re not in the store but at least it’s not showing ads and the UI/UX and performance are top notch. Integration with the rest of the Apple ecosystem really brings value to me. And that brings me to probably the most important point.
In the end what matters more is what ecosystem you are or want to be in. Unless you have a super specific requirement or ecosystem preference then generally I’d rank them Apple TV > Android TV > Fire Stick. Amazon doesn’t have an ecosystem to speak of so it hard to take it as a serious competitor to Google and Apple.
You don't need to be in the Apple ecosystem to buy an Apple TV and only use non-Apple services.
The only thing that will probably suck is the lack of things like MiraCast and Google's Casting stuff, but you could use third party AirPlay software (still free IIRC) to stream whatever you want if you want to use screen mirroring.
These days people tend to use their media boxes as App Launchers for other services anyway, so it doesn't really matter that much anymore.
I'm not in the Apple ecosystem, but I have an Apple TV. It really "just works", has been the less annoying out of the various devices I've used over the years (Roku, Fire stick etc.) My only nit is the stupid easy to lose remote, but I use a Harmony universal remote to avoid that stupidity.
"Google TV Streamer" is Googles official one, it's very streaming focused, any Android TV device of a reputable brand is good. NVIDIA Shields being the best.
I can recommend the app "Stremio" which has an extensive add-on ecosystem you can explore, works on Android, Android TV, Linux, MacOS and Windows!
I've semi-recently gone down the TV platforms rabbit hole again, and my overall impression is that they're all horrible.
I ended up grabbing a 6-year-old mini PC I had lying around in the basement and a >10-year-old TV that my father-in-law was going to throw away, as well as a Logitech y-10 air mouse [1] that I am lucky enough to have bought way back in the day.
I put desktop Linux on the PC with KDE plasma (avoiding Kodi, which, somehow, consistently attracts me but then annoys and frustrates me whenever I actually use it) and Brave.
I cranked up the scaling factor in KDE, and made a tiny tweak so KDE won't ask for superuser passwords and passwords on wallet access.
The browser is the only app I ever use on that thing, although it also has a DVD drive and VLC, and I copied my film collection onto the local disk of that thing.
I logged into all the media platforms I pay for (and the free ones I frequently use) and made an HTML file that links to all of them, using a huge font size, and setting it as home in the browser.
It cost me $0 (considering all the recycling), and it's a better experience than anything that money will buy.
I actually like TVs as a hardware concept, and am a happy paying customer of several VOD platforms, so I would seem to be the perfect customer for all these sticks and mini boxes and smart TV thingamajigs. But the UX is just so horrible. Everything about them screams, “We hate our customers”.
Last time I tried, I found that the VOD platforms I care about have their respective best implementations in their Desktop/Web-versions. Android Apps were not always available, and to the extent that they were, half of them were on Amazon/Fire, half of them on Android TV/Google Play. I remember, in one case (Masterclass), they used the Android App to upsell me on their "Premium" subscription (or maybe it was the download-feature on the Android App).
So I would have had to pay more, switch between multiple HDMI sources to switch to the platform with the app I wanted to consume, and would still have had to use my desktop PC for some of the content I was paying for.
And then, I could never get the apps I actually cared about to occupy most of the screen real estate (or at least be suitably prominently placed). Most of the real estate was dedicated to dark patterns trying to get me to pay for stuff I didn't want to pay for, even though I was already a happy paying customer for more than enough stuff and there wasn't a “give it a rest, already” setting anywhere to be found.
I think that anyone who is technically sufficiently well-versed, is going to avoid that hellscape like the plague. So then, who is the actual audience for this stuff? My guess would be: the old folks' home around the corner, which, sooner or later, will be forced to upgrade those TVs to smart-TVs. And once those old folks put in their credit card numbers or log in with their Amazon accounts, there goes a lot of people's inheritance.
My own elderly father is wise to the scam, but not confident in his ability to navigate the dark patterns. So now, he is afraid to input his credit card information into anything digital, essentially excluding him from cultural participation in the digital age.
It's just such a sad and sorry state of affairs. How did we get here?
Readit News
Unfortunately, the only more powerful alternatives are from offshore manufacturers and thus have spotty Android TV support and may not be "authorized" (ie whitelisted) by all encrypted streaming apps (Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, etc). It's bizarre that the most powerful dedicated TV streaming device available today is by far still the NVidia Shield which is essentially a 2015 era design (it got a very minor refresh in 2019 https://androidtvnews.com/nvidia-shield-differences/). It sucks because there are a lot of useful things a TV streaming device could do if it had a little more CPU/GPU headroom (AI upscaling, de-mosaicing, casual and retro-gaming).
Amazon optimise for sales and metrics over anything else.
I take you have some insider knowledge... if the app is hanging for dear life, how is that helping optimize the sales pipeline?
Baseless conjecture.
> Amazon optimise for sales and metrics over anything else.
But healthy sales requires an app that works.
LG TVs capabilities and performance from an app developer perspective is... not great.
Yet every other app on the TV seems to work just fine, with minimal latency and smooth animations. YouTube, HBO, Jellyfin, Netflix, Rakuten even the Vodafone TV application runs smoother, and it's generally the worst of the apps (sans Prime).
Yeah, so I mean if Amazon then developers their own framework + OS on top of React Native, how well do we think that'll go, if they're unable to use things well?
Is it a custom OS (custom kernel and everything) ? Is it a linux distribution?
https://developer.amazon.com/docs/vega/0.21/vega-overview.ht... does not say much...
https://developer.amazon.com/docs/vega/0.21/app-submission.h... "You must have a VPKG file available as an app binary."
I bought the 4K Max thinking it might be the best option for 4K streaming from all of the major providers as an upgrade for my aging Mi Box (3, I think); aside from the home screen being majority advert, the AV sync is constantly out and differs per-app, so changing it for one makes another worse, WiFi signal is poor and the whole thing is only "acceptable" performance wise.
I suppose Amazon is subsidising the pricing, the the advert laden home screen is a given, but AV sync when it's plugged directly into the HDMI port on the TV is appalling. The Prime Video app on it is disgracefully slow to input and browser, but in that department I find Netflix is really the only app that does perform well on the various TV devices I've tried.
At one point, I thought I wanted an Android TV box, but I realise now that I really don't care so long has it has all of the major streaming apps and performs well (a half decent remote is a must too).
I'm able to playback H.265 and AV1 video content at 4k@60 without any issues.
I had one for a bit for the purpose of sideloading FreeTube via adb (I think it was called). That's the only good I can say about it.
Ignoring the missing functionality, I can see one possibility being that the TV's built in computer is just too weak to process video? Would I better off buying a mini-PC to run all of the services off of?
But what seems like the most obvious explanation is that they know they can get by with it because they have exclusive rights to whatever show you're trying to watch.
The only thing the FireTV had as an edge was the Xbox game streaming app which worked fine over WiFi6E. Otherwise it was absolutely ad-ridden, poor UI/UX, and Amazon’s apps suck on any platform. Since I no longer use the Xbox stuff, the stick and the older versions I have line the bottom of some drawer.
The Android TV turned out be almost as ad ridden as the Fire Stick and no obvious outstanding features. Works ok though. I wanted it to sideload some TV apps from another country to stream those TV channels. But the Android apks didn’t behave well on Android TV so into the drawer it went.
The AppleTV can’t run those apps either, they’re not in the store but at least it’s not showing ads and the UI/UX and performance are top notch. Integration with the rest of the Apple ecosystem really brings value to me. And that brings me to probably the most important point.
In the end what matters more is what ecosystem you are or want to be in. Unless you have a super specific requirement or ecosystem preference then generally I’d rank them Apple TV > Android TV > Fire Stick. Amazon doesn’t have an ecosystem to speak of so it hard to take it as a serious competitor to Google and Apple.
The only thing that will probably suck is the lack of things like MiraCast and Google's Casting stuff, but you could use third party AirPlay software (still free IIRC) to stream whatever you want if you want to use screen mirroring.
These days people tend to use their media boxes as App Launchers for other services anyway, so it doesn't really matter that much anymore.
I can recommend the app "Stremio" which has an extensive add-on ecosystem you can explore, works on Android, Android TV, Linux, MacOS and Windows!
I've semi-recently gone down the TV platforms rabbit hole again, and my overall impression is that they're all horrible.
I ended up grabbing a 6-year-old mini PC I had lying around in the basement and a >10-year-old TV that my father-in-law was going to throw away, as well as a Logitech y-10 air mouse [1] that I am lucky enough to have bought way back in the day.
I put desktop Linux on the PC with KDE plasma (avoiding Kodi, which, somehow, consistently attracts me but then annoys and frustrates me whenever I actually use it) and Brave.
I cranked up the scaling factor in KDE, and made a tiny tweak so KDE won't ask for superuser passwords and passwords on wallet access.
The browser is the only app I ever use on that thing, although it also has a DVD drive and VLC, and I copied my film collection onto the local disk of that thing.
I logged into all the media platforms I pay for (and the free ones I frequently use) and made an HTML file that links to all of them, using a huge font size, and setting it as home in the browser.
It cost me $0 (considering all the recycling), and it's a better experience than anything that money will buy.
I actually like TVs as a hardware concept, and am a happy paying customer of several VOD platforms, so I would seem to be the perfect customer for all these sticks and mini boxes and smart TV thingamajigs. But the UX is just so horrible. Everything about them screams, “We hate our customers”.
Last time I tried, I found that the VOD platforms I care about have their respective best implementations in their Desktop/Web-versions. Android Apps were not always available, and to the extent that they were, half of them were on Amazon/Fire, half of them on Android TV/Google Play. I remember, in one case (Masterclass), they used the Android App to upsell me on their "Premium" subscription (or maybe it was the download-feature on the Android App).
So I would have had to pay more, switch between multiple HDMI sources to switch to the platform with the app I wanted to consume, and would still have had to use my desktop PC for some of the content I was paying for.
And then, I could never get the apps I actually cared about to occupy most of the screen real estate (or at least be suitably prominently placed). Most of the real estate was dedicated to dark patterns trying to get me to pay for stuff I didn't want to pay for, even though I was already a happy paying customer for more than enough stuff and there wasn't a “give it a rest, already” setting anywhere to be found.
I think that anyone who is technically sufficiently well-versed, is going to avoid that hellscape like the plague. So then, who is the actual audience for this stuff? My guess would be: the old folks' home around the corner, which, sooner or later, will be forced to upgrade those TVs to smart-TVs. And once those old folks put in their credit card numbers or log in with their Amazon accounts, there goes a lot of people's inheritance.
My own elderly father is wise to the scam, but not confident in his ability to navigate the dark patterns. So now, he is afraid to input his credit card information into anything digital, essentially excluding him from cultural participation in the digital age.
It's just such a sad and sorry state of affairs. How did we get here?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_W1dqRuljI