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I do not have this one, but my wife and I bought a similar one. I have used fire TV's in hotels and Air BnB's as well.
I will never purchase a Fire TV again. If the performance is OK to begin with (which it wasn't for the one we purchased), it degrades over time, eventually making the TV's smart features difficult to use. It's very annoying. Using Fire TV sticks is a different matter - if those degrade over time, just pay another 20-30 dollars, and get a newer one. It's very little eWaste compared to tossing a whole cheap TV which is no longer usable.
It's OK if you toggle the setting to by default go to "last input" in the settings, which at least loads whatever STB you have plugged in instead of going to the smart TV interface. If you're going that route, never connect it to the internet, and it'll avoid performance degradation that comes with the inevitable software bloat.
I do not have this one, but my wife and I bought a similar one. I have used fire TV's in hotels and Air BnB's as well.
I will never purchase a Fire TV again. If the performance is OK to begin with (which it wasn't for the one we purchased), it degrades over time, eventually making the TV's smart features difficult to use. It's very annoying. Using Fire TV sticks is a different matter - if those degrade over time, just pay another 20-30 dollars, and get a newer one. It's very little eWaste compared to tossing a whole cheap TV which is no longer usable.
It's OK if you toggle the setting to by default go to "last input" in the settings, which at least loads whatever STB you have plugged in instead of going to the smart TV interface. If you're going that route, never connect it to the internet, and it'll avoid performance degradation that comes with the inevitable software bloat.
Nothing stops you a few years later from putting a fire stick on a fire TV. I've done this and it works fine. Besides... how much do you expect from a $75 TV? I spend as much on a single dinner these days.
Nothing stops you a few years later from putting a fire stick on a fire TV. I've done this and it works fine. Besides... how much do you expect from a $75 TV? I spend as much on a single dinner these days.
Maybe I am spoiled by the entire history of how TV's worked prior to the modern era (I have a gray beard), but my expectation is that when you press a button on a remote, something happens right away on the TV. All over technology - not just TV's - we're seeing this baseline expectation slipping.
This was true with my FireTV out of the box. It was slow and clunky, and not very responsive. From day 1, it was a bad experience.
Maybe I am spoiled by the entire history of how TV's worked prior to the modern era (I have a gray beard), but my expectation is that when you press a button on a remote, something happens right away on the TV. All over technology - not just TV's - we're seeing this baseline expectation slipping.
This was true with my FireTV out of the box. It was slow and clunky, and not very responsive. From day 1, it was a bad experience.
I feel your pain but this is what we get when we move from a TV simple being a box to display sound and pictures OTA. They are computers now, all of thme, and like a computer, when the software continues to advance, eventually the computer will be too slow.
In this case I suspect the TV/Computer was already slowing down and why it was on sale. All TV's sold today are "smart" or computer tv's. If you bought a Sony running WebOS you might install a fast fire stick on day one. Why is this any different? If a fire TV os is too slow, just add a faster external tuner.
I will agree with you in one way. Most of the time these external "tuners" (Fire TV, Google TV, Apple TV, Roku) only slow down because the company that makes them forces all sorts of features and ads that we do not want. Let me just pick and watch Hulu or Netflix or any other streaming service without all this extra crap that I don't need.
So I bet you bought an older discounted Fire TV that had a slower CPU in it. While they try and hide what version of Fire/Google TV is inside, you can look it up or just use the date the TV went on sale to determine how old/slow the CPU inside is.
I feel your pain but this is what we get when we move from a TV simple being a box to display sound and pictures OTA. They are computers now, all of thme, and like a computer, when the software continues to advance, eventually the computer will be too slow.In this case I suspect the TV/Computer was already slowing down and why it was on sale. All TV's sold today are "smart" or computer tv's. If you bought a Sony running WebOS you might install a fast fire stick on day one. Why is this any different? If a fire TV os is too slow, just add a faster external tuner.I will agree with you in one way. Most of the time these external "tuners" (Fire TV, Google TV, Apple TV, Roku) only slow down because the company that makes them forces all sorts of features and ads that we do not want. Let me just pick and watch Hulu or Netflix or any other streaming service without all this extra crap that I don't need.So I bet you bought an older discounted Fire TV that had a slower CPU in it. While they try and hide what version of Fire/Google TV is inside, you can look it up or just use the date the TV went on sale to determine how old/slow the CPU inside is.
I work in the software industry. There's not really any good excuse for software bloat, it's either greed or laziness. Leave behind the old devices on an older revision if newer software degrades their performance - most likely, they have no idea how bad the performance is on these devices to begin with because they only test against newer hardware revisions.
In this case I suspect the TV/Computer was already slowing down and why it was on sale.
Could very well be. I keep hoping we'll see a bootloader unlock exploit come out, and we can start flashing TV's with LineageOS. Something some folks have been doing with Fire sticks is replacing the default launcher, which significantly improves the whole experience. I'm not sure you can do the same to a FireTV? It's on my list of summer projects for my TV which is a total dog.
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I will never purchase a Fire TV again. If the performance is OK to begin with (which it wasn't for the one we purchased), it degrades over time, eventually making the TV's smart features difficult to use. It's very annoying. Using Fire TV sticks is a different matter - if those degrade over time, just pay another 20-30 dollars, and get a newer one. It's very little eWaste compared to tossing a whole cheap TV which is no longer usable.
It's OK if you toggle the setting to by default go to "last input" in the settings, which at least loads whatever STB you have plugged in instead of going to the smart TV interface. If you're going that route, never connect it to the internet, and it'll avoid performance degradation that comes with the inevitable software bloat.
I will never purchase a Fire TV again. If the performance is OK to begin with (which it wasn't for the one we purchased), it degrades over time, eventually making the TV's smart features difficult to use. It's very annoying. Using Fire TV sticks is a different matter - if those degrade over time, just pay another 20-30 dollars, and get a newer one. It's very little eWaste compared to tossing a whole cheap TV which is no longer usable.
It's OK if you toggle the setting to by default go to "last input" in the settings, which at least loads whatever STB you have plugged in instead of going to the smart TV interface. If you're going that route, never connect it to the internet, and it'll avoid performance degradation that comes with the inevitable software bloat.
This was true with my FireTV out of the box. It was slow and clunky, and not very responsive. From day 1, it was a bad experience.
This was true with my FireTV out of the box. It was slow and clunky, and not very responsive. From day 1, it was a bad experience.
In this case I suspect the TV/Computer was already slowing down and why it was on sale. All TV's sold today are "smart" or computer tv's. If you bought a Sony running WebOS you might install a fast fire stick on day one. Why is this any different? If a fire TV os is too slow, just add a faster external tuner.
I will agree with you in one way. Most of the time these external "tuners" (Fire TV, Google TV, Apple TV, Roku) only slow down because the company that makes them forces all sorts of features and ads that we do not want. Let me just pick and watch Hulu or Netflix or any other streaming service without all this extra crap that I don't need.
So I bet you bought an older discounted Fire TV that had a slower CPU in it. While they try and hide what version of Fire/Google TV is inside, you can look it up or just use the date the TV went on sale to determine how old/slow the CPU inside is.
In this case I suspect the TV/Computer was already slowing down and why it was on sale.
Could very well be. I keep hoping we'll see a bootloader unlock exploit come out, and we can start flashing TV's with LineageOS. Something some folks have been doing with Fire sticks is replacing the default launcher, which significantly improves the whole experience. I'm not sure you can do the same to a FireTV? It's on my list of summer projects for my TV which is a total dog.
Join The Conversation
Share information with the community. Please follow our Community Guidelines and be kind!