Bought an early one. Used it for less than a year.

I still have it. Can they be flashed with Lineage or something?

I’m surprised it wasn’t showing ads before. The fire tablets are discounted if they show ads on the lock screen.

Ironically, last I checked, the Walmart Onn branded box is quite good. They don’t seem to have any protections to stop you from installing a custom home launcher.

You can easily change launchers on the NVIDIA Shield and Chromecasts. Fire TV’s are really the only devices that actively prevent changing launchers and try to force you to deal with their advertising.

Personally my recommendation is generally the Shield, or maybe an Apple TV depending on your use case. Expensive but well worth it imo, you really do get what you pay for.

If you need cheaper, then I’d probably go the Chromecast. Lesser of the two evils between like the Fire TV imo.

What are Roku up to these days? I stopped paying attention when they became less of a value option

As said above, Apple TV is really the only one that’s good. It’s great honestly. Zero ads, quick, and even the old HD box is still getting the latest OS updates. It costs the most but it’s truly worth it.

The Apple TV is the best out there. It’s quick, has a great remote now, and not full of ads. I don’t use android but there’s probably a third party app to use as a remote for pasting passwords.

I think the general public isn’t stupid in this instance, I think they’re just cheap. I have a friend who filled his house with Echo speakers and bragged that it was less expensive than a couple HomePods or Sonos speakers. When I pointed out that Alexa made shopping suggestions after a request he made, he kinda brushed it off, but a few months later he disconnected them all when he noticed private conversations around the house were influencing his Amazon recommendations. He’s fortunate enough to have learned from his mistake and been able to afford to fix it. A lot of folks see a 4k streaming device for $30, compare it to something like the Nvidia shield or the Apple TV, and think it’s a great deal. When they find themselves frustrated by advertising a couple days, weeks, or months later (or maybe desensitized to it like a frog in boiling water), it’s too late. They’ve already spent their money, and/or assume that this is just what all streaming devices are like, so why spend more for this experience?

Stupidity? Probably not, just cheapness and an ignorance of how low cost hardware stays low cost.

There’s issues with PCs as well. Most browsers don’t play full HD nor 4k. I haven’t found a solution for that even though most of our viewing is from an attached gaming PC.

HTPC?

It’s also a terrible site now. It’s nothing but Alibaba crap marked up 700% and counterfeit products.

I would but at that point it would be very difficult to get some of the specialty tools I use. I have a whole catalog and it takes ages to get anything from it. Granted I don’t use their fire TV or whatever and so I’m not actually seeing these shitty ads.

You pay the Amazon tax indirectly often enough regardless. Huge chunks of the Internet run on AWS. And if it’s not AWS, then it’s Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure. Shareholders win again.

As for not buying shitty products, returning them when you realise how shitty they are, cancelling contracts when services turn shitty, etc. Yes, do that.

Before amazon existed all the companies they killed for their monopoly existed.

I to this day have proudly never bought anything from Amazon (unless you count the one ebay purchase that was shipped from Amazon without my knowledge). However I have run into a couple of products, namely quality name brand USB4 cables (Plugable and Ugreen) that I for the life of me cannot find anywhere but Amazon in Australia.

So yes I have proudly survived without Amazon until very soon. I will try to continue to not use Amazon however with some sellers opting to exclusively sell on Amazon, I feel I am being left with no choice. It seems not enough boycotted Amazon when it mattered to the point that there are an increasing amount of items that are only available through them.

Facebook and Amazon are on my shit list due to their shear contempt for their customers/products and employees.

Naw, it didn’t stop any other company i boycotted, and thinking it does is actually a silly idea to consider if you give it a minute to be in the ol’ noggin.

If it did make a difference there’d be a bunch of astroturf campaigns against voting with your wallet, wouldn’t there?

The only thing that stops this is something we’re not ready for yet.

EDIT: wimps.

I gave them 1 star and left a bad review for each of the fire tvs…they called me about the revie and then did nothing…buy a roku and throw out your $800 fire tv…it is worth it to take the loss for your own sanity

Enshittification.

we just got done with a prime ‘trial’… they are really pushing the extra-cost subs and rentals in the ui now, which buries the actual free-with-prime content so much that it’s much easier to use a third-party site to find stuff.

Probably because one ad is like nothing compared to what we used to have to deal with on broadcast TV. Sadly the general public who have only just recently gotten into streaming in the last few years still have those kinds of ad breaks fresh in memory.

Fuck that. High seas it is, they can kiss my ass. I will not pay to watch advertisements.

I was halfway through reading and thinking that it would be a wholesome ending. I guess not.