Amazon is now automatically playing fullscreen video ads on Fire TV

That's why piracy is back on the menu.

107

That has nothing to do with piracy or not. Its just a device to play media. You can use a firetv to 100% stream pirated content via kodi or plex and still have to see this shit.

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- I don’t see it. I have mine blocked from dialing home, receiving updates and autoplays have long been turned off.
  
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- It can be, in some way. For example when content is exclusive to video streaming platforms which are only available through these devices.
  
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- People are desperate to justify stealing stuff, cus no one wants to be the bad guy in their own head.
  
  “Gas prices going up? To the high seas I go!”
  
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Or you know have the sense god gave goats and be able to see the neon sign as they have been blowing out Amazon home devices for years. Now they need to recoup that half decade of losses. Buckle up.

Honestly, this is why we are here. I get it if you use their delivery because getting stuff can be hard depending on the area. But this stuff, where there are half dozen competing options… come on.

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- I wasn't specifically talking about this product alone, but about the general trend. I don't own any Amazon hardware.
  
  A few years ago, piracy was all but dead because or really good offers like Netflix. All the stuff you wanted was there and the price was ok.
  
  Now to get the same that you got for a tenner a month on Netflix, you have to pay for half a dozen of streaming services.
  
  Youtube forces you to watch more ads than actual content. All services are increasing prices while decreasing what you are getting for that money. And all sorts of products are retroactively introducing ads.
  
  I mean seriously, if someone bought that stick, they paid for it. They shouldn't have to worry about updates actively making the device worse.
  
  It's an industry-wide trend that sucks, and it's one that creates resistance. People start pirating, use adblock and some hack their devices. Not because it's impossible to have a situation that suits everyone, but because they purpously use enshittification to suck more money out of their customers.
  
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It's unbelievable. The dumb fuckers literally figured out a way to beat piracy. High quantity, easily accessible content at an appetizable price. Even one for TV, one for music, $10-15 a month, I had no issue. Everyone made out like a bandit, I was satisfied, and they all made billions.

Now you can't even use YouTube without being bombarded with ads, and streaming is quickly becoming worse than cable was. Piracy is definitely back on the table, and the fuckers don't have license to whine about it this time. They literally had it licked, but then got too greedy, so fuck them.

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Permanently Deleted

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May we think about one more question also?

Why is this even possible? We should have this thing called software, that should be replecable without changing the hardware, right?

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- Permanently Deleted
  
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Why do people still use those?

29

They’re cheap. That’s as far as some people think about it.

35
I use a fire stick because I'm familiar with them and they are much better than the shitty OS built into my TVs. Is there an alternative you recommend? I'm open to changing, especially with how theyve been pushing ads and paid rentals lately

15
- Roku is pretty nice
  
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- Apple TV. No ads at all, it’s faster than every alternative (unless you’re building your own server), and it is much easier to use than every alternative.
  
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- If you have the money, I'd go for an NVIDIA Shield, or maybe an Apple TV. Well worth the money.
  
  Otherwise, for budget, you could get a Chromecast, which gives you more control over it and has generally less garbage than the Fire TVs do for instance, since you can easily change its launcher and debloat with ADB.
  
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I got a 4K Max one because it was only 35€. I want to upgrade to a shield pro successor which is overdue by now.

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- If you want to do this because of the full screen ads you may be too late.
  
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- 4k Max is so much faster than the Shield devices, i actually got upset that i invested so much money in two of them.
  
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Easy to sideload apps and use it for streaming, and I'm too lazy to set up my *arr self hosted media server with jellyfin again.

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At this point just get a rasbperry pi, or some similar device, and run it as a regular computer. Firefox, ublock origin, don't worry about ads, and turn it into a machine that is capable of soooooooo much more. Hell, any PC will work. Steam Deck, NUC, that old laptop you have laying around? Been running little NUCs on my TVs for years and so happy I don't have to put up with that nonsense.

29

Which OS is good for this? Which remote can be used? I use my Stick to launch several apps like Plex, Smarttube Next, ARD Mediathek (German TV series). Not needing anything more. But a snappy remote and support for various audio and video codecs is key.

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- I'm a linux nerd and I jut run stock Fedora. It's desktop is like a phone UI, so lots of folks are familiar with it.
  
  I then use a wireless keyboard and trackball. T
  
  here are tons of remotes out there,but I don't have any experience with then. Let me know if you find a good remote though. 😁
  
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- I run CoreELEC/LibreELEC on all my streaming devices. It only runs Kodi but since Kodi has tons of addons it is fairly easy to customize. Kodi also plays pretty much any codec in existence and has support for various remotes.
  
  https://coreelec.org/
  
  https://libreelec.tv/
  
  If you're planning to play 4k content you will want something with a little bit more power than a Raspberry Pi 4. For Dolby Vision you need one of the few supported devices.
  
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Agreed. I started out with r-pi for the TV and and refuse to ever go back to just the smart-TV or stick interface. I've since moved on to more powerful HTPC/dedicated game server PC so I can host games for our friends but I still have the r-pi.

Honestly as nice as some of the smart TV or smart stick functions are, they're only nice because they're zero-effort. For just a slight amount of effort and no technical knowledge you can have a much better and safer setup.

3

The Fire TV Sticks are getting more unusable with every update.

25

don't update them

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- Most updates are OTA. They don't give you a choice
  
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So… this leaves Apple as the only mainstream media device vendor not forcing home screen ads (unless you swap the launcher on a Google TV)…?

15

I'm sitting here watching Nvidia Shield, Amazon, and Windows, etc all cram ads into their shit and really reaaally hoping Apple doesn't break on this one.

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Roku

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- Roku has tons of Home Screen ads what are you talking about? It was so bad I spent about 5 minutes using it until I went and bought an Apple TV.
  
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- Until recently, yeah. Recently, my Roku TV is forcing me to interact with an ad (express interest or disinterest) before I can even launch an app.
  
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- Indeed, though it still doesn't have a web browser.
  
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Pretty much unfortunately. The good thing is its trivially easy to change launchers on the NVIDIA Shield or Google TV devices, plus you can even go a step forward and debloat them entirely with ADB. Amazon's really the only manufacturer I'd say that forces home screen ads with no choice around it, since they actively prevent changing launchers and such. But Apple is probably the only one out of the box with no advertising.

5
Doesn't its home screen hover on the Music app by default, which shows nearly-fullscreen banners that are almost ads?

I don't have one, but in every Apple TV from my school, that's how it starts up

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- The top banner shows content from whatever app you hover over. You can rearrange your apps.
  
  And I don't use Music on mine much but I'm pretty sure it just shows your own content?
  
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- It shows content from whatever app you have highlighted. If you were recently watching Love is Blind on Netflix and you hover over Netflix it will show a love is blind banner. If you were watching pirated stuff from your home server on Infuse then hovering over infuse will show you the most recent thing you opened. They’re not ads, it’s just a “recent” list.
  
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- I’ve shuffled mine around so I have folders on my home row, it just shows static tiles of the apps
  
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I complained about this to "support" a few days ago. A full screen ad before the home screen with the top 1/3 an ad and the bottom 1/3 ads.

Straight up told them I will pick another manufacturer this weekend.

I'm burned out on protecting myself from smart devices. Maybe just a dumb screen this round.

Edit: I have every single privacy setting set to off, but some update added a new category and defaults to on. Don't know how long Amazon has been spying on me or what they took.

My device has autoplay off already. It may have stopped a full screen video ad, but there is a full screen picture ad instead.

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A full screen ad before the home screen with the top 1/3 an ad and the bottom 1/3 ads.

We're almost there

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Why would support care, this is clearly a feature not a bug. Did you at least demand a refund on the device?

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- They didn't whatsoever. I expected that. They said they sent my complaint through so I hope I tickled a 0 into a 1 somewhere in their sea of data, but I don't expect results.
  
  Oh yeah, they followed up with an offer to buy a new TV. Like, that was a little cold there, dude.
  
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Which is why I just bought an nVidia Shield Pro. Custom launcher coming tomorrow. Time to start torrenting again.

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Which launcher are you planning to use?

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- https://gitlab.com/flauncher/flauncher probably. Not sure yet, but has to be FLOSS.
  
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Glad I don't really watch content anymore. Though, between the Roku TV my kid has, and the big Samsung TV in our living room...my pihole is constantly hammered by both of them.

6

Isn't a firestick basically a chromecast? I mean, google is a shitty company in matters about privacy or ethics, but amazon isn't much better

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I can cast to my internet-disabled TV anything to it, including pirate streaming sites with no ads. 20 years ago I ran a hdmi from my desktop and used a wireless touchpad to load downloaded stuff. It truly is the golden age of piracy

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They have been built onto android until now, but i read that they wanted to ditch that and make their own os from scratch

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They're more like AndroidTV boxes with a full menu and HDMI-CEC support, only they came out back in the day when Chromecasts were just for casting. They were also dirt cheap; unfortunately that's because they were made with bargain-basement parts which often failed or started to overheat easily a few months in.

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Yeah, Chromecasts are much better than Fire TV's, due to the more control you have over them and how easy it is change the launcher vs. Amazon actively preventing it. Basically same price and budget as well. Plus Google running a newer version of Android in general vs. Amazon's, etc. Chromecasts are probably lesser of the two evils imo.

4

I have a fire tv cube just direct launch into apps to avoid this. For example instead of powering on the fire tv with power button I tell Alexa to open the app I need.

Down side is this doesn’t really work with sieloaded apps like smart tube

3

Sounds like this can be better avoided by not having an fire TV cube at all

13

If I hadn’t already disabled autoplays and blocked it from dialing home for updates, this might be a concern.

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Lols :)

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