[HN Gopher] Amazon Vega OS and Vega Developer Tools
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon Vega OS and Vega Developer Tools
Author : luismedel
Score : 59 points
Date : 2025-10-01 06:45 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (developer.amazon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (developer.amazon.com)
| kotaKat wrote:
| I'm assuming they've basically replaced the walled garden with a
| greenhouse with these changes to Vega OS?
|
| At least it (hopefully) means no more stupid "cracked fire TV
| sticks" on the local market. The end-user-support experience is
| downright awful and I'm sick of having to explain to people I
| can't help with them.
| benbristow wrote:
| They'll find another Android based device to use instead.
|
| The main reason, at least around the people I know, people buy
| Fire Sticks is to watch football/soccer at 3pm on a Saturday
| (there's a UK wide blackout to encourage fans to go to their
| local game, albeit if you're a fan of a club far away or a
| Premier League team you're going to struggle to get there,
| games are still aired abroad, IPTV services skirt round this)
| and to save money on multiple media subscriptions (IYKYK).
|
| I can only imagine after this change people will stop buying
| them as they're close to useless as people have Smart TVs for
| the legal stuff.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Yeah I know saying that in hindsight it's just going to go to
| the ONN sticks instead and stay within Google TV - but it
| solves the problem Amazon wanted which is to quickly and
| smartly move the problem away from themselves and onto
| someone else's loss leader.
|
| (And Walmart already has started doing regionlocking to try
| to crack down on that, too! Taking an ONN box out of the US
| will error out in setup and complain it's only for sale in
| US/PR.)
| benbristow wrote:
| They may as well stop selling them. I doubt many people are
| going to buy a Fire Stick to watch Prime and Netflix when
| you already can on any standard Smart TV. It's harder to
| buy a dumb TV now than it is a smart one. Never mind if you
| also have a game console connected which can run the same
| apps. Or a set top box like Virgin Media which run apps
| too.
| cebert wrote:
| The nice thing about sticks is when you go on trips or
| vacation. You're authenticated into all of your
| subscriptions already and don't have to sign in. The
| convenience of using sticks they eliminate the need to
| sign in at hotels or other places, which is why I love
| them.
| la_oveja wrote:
| id say is a fairly niche use case, people tend to
| disconnect outside when going on vacation not watch
| netflix from the hotel.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I like to travel, in particular road trips and
| disconnecting is often part of that. Even then, I'm not
| much of a nightlife person so will often still watch TV
| for a couple hours at night before bed.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| +1, that's what I do. Only problem is that the HDMI port
| can be hard to get to.
| benbristow wrote:
| A lot of hotels I've been to recently have a HDMI port
| baked into the row of plugs and switches above the desk.
| Handy.
|
| Might be worth getting a male to female HDMI extension
| cable to make it easier to plug in.
| alias_neo wrote:
| Presumably some services have issues with locale? Does
| anyone run a VPN to home on these devices? I'd never
| considered taking my Firestick on holiday but I'll
| definitely consider that for the future.
| benbristow wrote:
| NordVPN have an app on the Store and so do others.
| mmahemoff wrote:
| Correct. Fortunately a number of streaming services are
| available in many regions nowadays, e.g., Netflix, Apple
| TV, Disney, HBO Max or whatever it's called now.
|
| The content may vary between regions though, e.g., you
| open Netflix in another country and no longer see a show
| you're watching while see other ones appear. This can
| sometimes feel like a feature more than a bug.
| mmahemoff wrote:
| Yes and combine with a travel router so you don't have to
| endure logging into a wifi portal with a soft keyboard on
| the TV, if the stick OS even allows it. Then having to
| repeat the process daily due to expiration times, or as
| soon as you remove the key card from the hotel room slot,
| causing the router to power down and the TV stick to time
| out.
| benbristow wrote:
| Top tip, if you're in a hotel room you can often put any
| card like item (e.g. loyalty card) into the slot and it
| still works.
|
| This works at a lot of chain hotels. Not every hotel, but
| a lot of them. In the UK this works in most Premier Inns
| and Travelodges, doesn't work in Point A hotels from
| experience.
|
| Alternatively ask for two or more cards at the desk.
|
| If the room is cleaned daily the cleaners have a tendency
| to remove them though. The chain hotels only tend to
| clean if you ask though, or on a certain few days after
| check-in.
|
| Helps if you want to keep the air con on or devices
| powered up.
| alias_neo wrote:
| > people will stop buying them as they're close to useless as
| people have Smart TVs for the legal stuff
|
| I don't know if by "people" you mean specifically the people
| who use them for illegal streams, but there are others of us
| who buy them.
|
| I have a perfectly good high-end LG OLED TV that's now ~7-8
| years old, and I wanted something with better performance
| (and newer WiFi standards) for streaming apps in 4K, I've
| used a couple of different boxes/dongles in that time and am
| currently using a Firestick 4K Max, it sort of does the job
| but of course it's advert-ridden and has AV sync issues,
| overall performance is ok, but the Prime Video app is still
| appallingly slow, Netflix runs great, Disney is ok, and the
| others are a variety of acceptable to poor.
| benbristow wrote:
| If you go into any pub in the UK and say fire stick, people
| assume it's not legit content you're using one for. They're
| infamous for allowing people to watch football (soccer!)
| games illegally on Saturday at 3pm when the TV blackout is
| on, as people outside the country can watch the games.
| alias_neo wrote:
| I've certainly heard of the dodgy usage of fire stick for
| streams but I've never been into football, what's this
| blackout all about?
| benbristow wrote:
| The idea is that between around 3pm and 6pm every
| Saturday, outwith international breaks when international
| teams play (e.g. World Cup), no TV station in the UK is
| allowed to air live football. 3pm is the main kick off
| time.
|
| The idea is that this encourages people to go to their
| local football team instead of watching the game on TV.
|
| For a small island, there are massive amount of football
| teams. If you're American you're probably only familiar
| with the 'Premier League' with teams like Manchester
| United/City, Arsenal, Chelsea etc. and maybe the Scottish
| Premier League with Celtic and Rangers, and maybe
| Championship thanks to 'Welcome to Wrexham' but there are
| leagues and leagues below, it goes very deep until you
| get to teams literally just playing on a bit of grass
| behind a church in a small village and the local gym
| teacher being the referee.
|
| The blackout is supposed to mean you go to whatever team
| is nearest or easiest to get to for you, going to big
| team Premier League games is very expensive if not
| impossible unless you have silly money to spend or wait
| years (I mean like 10+ years for a season ticket).
|
| But it doesn't really work for a lot of people. If you
| moved away for university etc. you might still want to
| watch your team but the only local team is your team's
| rival. Or you would end up watching the village football
| team game.
|
| Most games are aired abroad for expats and foreign fans,
| but UK residents are unable to watch those legally, hence
| the growth in fire sticks.
| alias_neo wrote:
| Thanks for the explanation.
|
| I'm British, but having never been into football (or any
| sport really) I wasn't aware of this TV blackout; given
| what I do know of people who don't necessarily support
| the local team, this sounds like madness, also how does
| this work for away games? I know loads of people who
| live/work in London now who still support their home town
| team.
|
| So, to make sure I understand this correctly; if I wanted
| to watch a particular team, say my local one, without
| going to the game, there is no actual legit way to watch
| that match from home?
| benbristow wrote:
| To answer your last question, yes. You would have to go
| watch your local lower non-league team if you wanted to
| watch football.
|
| I suspect your London friends are using VPNs and/or
| illegal streams, or simply just following scores or
| watching watchalongs, Soccer Saturday etc.
|
| Games outwith the Saturday blackout can be watched
| legally, bigger teams usually on TV or via club streaming
| services. Games are often scheduled at lunchtime and
| after 6pm to allow them to be aired on TV on Saturday.
| alias_neo wrote:
| This is quite the revelation. I had no idea that matches
| can't be watched on TV as they play. is there not even a
| pay-to-watch service, like with fights?
|
| I've certainly got something to talk about next time I
| see some of my football fan friends, and I'll have to ask
| what they do to watch the games, I'm not aware of any of
| them actually going to the matches when I've known the
| local (Premier League) team to be playing.
| benbristow wrote:
| No, only if you're outside of the UK or if it's an
| international break when international teams are playing
| (World Cup, Euros etc.) on a Saturday at 3pm.
|
| Outside the blackout games are on TV as per usual.
| neom wrote:
| Do people over there generally support this law? It's to
| my mind a super weird law, but to a degree... I dig it.
| benbristow wrote:
| I think there is a general support but it is weaning with
| people skirting around the rules nonchalantly, and TV
| companies wanting to make more money. It is a running
| joke of people "going to France for the day" in fanbases
| (code for VPN usage).
|
| Some 3pm games have started to air on trial.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I won't use my "smart" features in my TVs... I'd get rid of
| them if I could... The tracking is generally worse than
| Apple, Google or Roku on them. I know some are using Google
| or Roku software, but even then, just not a fan. I've been
| pretty happy with Shield TV boxes for around a decade now.
| znpy wrote:
| What is this Vega OS ?
|
| 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...
| laveur wrote:
| 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...
| nguyenkien wrote:
| From last year announcement, this is custom linux.
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| (Deleted)
| nguyenkien wrote:
| This docs for FireOS, don't confuse with new Vega OS
| mrandish wrote:
| 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.
| diggan wrote:
| 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.
| drcongo wrote:
| It's so bad on iOS that I unsubscribed.
| benbristow wrote:
| All Amazon apps are buggy and broken. The Amazon shopping app
| is awful, a bunch of put together web pages hanging on for dear
| life.
|
| Amazon optimise for sales and metrics over anything else.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _optimise for sales and metrics_
|
| I take you have some insider knowledge... if the app is
| hanging for dear life, how is that helping optimize the sales
| pipeline?
| benbristow wrote:
| It's a mess but the main flows just about function so it
| makes money.
| babuloseo wrote:
| I learned my lesson to not trust amazon after sagemaker, some
| of their core services are good and well done.
| 2dvisio wrote:
| Curious about the sagemaker experience. What specifically
| was that broke?
| eysquared wrote:
| 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.
| diggan wrote:
| > 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).
| pjmlp wrote:
| No big complaints with WebOS, and actually I find it more
| enjoyable as user than Android TV.
| tracker1 wrote:
| 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.
| diggan wrote:
| > 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?
| tracker1 wrote:
| If I were to guess, they aren't heavily modifying
| anything... it's likely a fork from Android and supporting
| React Native as a primary tool towards developers. I
| honestly doubt they've actually "done" much of anything
| other than branding and packaging.
| rstat1 wrote:
| Fire OS was an Android fork. Best I can tell from the
| stuff I've seen in the news about it, is that Vega OS is
| not Android at all, and is completely custom (well minus
| the Linux kernel)
| phantomathkg wrote:
| Vega is FireTV new OS. LG TV run webOS, which is totally
| different.
| JCM9 wrote:
| I find Amazon's software for streaming much slower and buggier
| than other providers. The streams too also seem to have more
| issues.
| pwarner wrote:
| What's better? I'm not in the Apple ecosystem. My key criteria
| would be UX and video quality. Thanks
| bl4ckm0r3 wrote:
| imo basic android tv os works better, i have a nvidia shield
| and it's good too (despite being old now).
| mosburger wrote:
| The UI looks a little dated, but I've been happy with 4K
| Roku. The UX is more functional if uglier than AppleTV.
| close04 wrote:
| 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.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| The delta in power between Apple TVs and most other
| streaming boxes/dongles is absurd. Even the now ancient
| 2017 Apple TV 4K has the muscle to brute force decode a lot
| of video that isn't natively hardware accelerated,
| meanwhile there's piles of brand new boxes/dongles that are
| hopelessly weak and don't have a prayer of being able to
| handle the same files. The gap is more like a canyon if
| comparing against the current Apple TV model, and the
| upcoming refresh is probably going to make it basically a
| Mac Nano in terms of horsepower.
|
| Yes they're more pricey, but you're getting a lot more
| hardware and better longevity for that money.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's incredible how consistently bad Set Top Box (and now
| some embedded-in-tv) products have been, going all the
| way back to the 90s. It's like every one of these STB
| manufacturers follows the same playbook: 1. Cut hardware
| performance down to the absolute bare minimum required to
| decode some insufficiently selected, average quality
| video. 2. Make interaction with a remote control as laggy
| and painful as possible, while also providing stupid
| [company specific] buttons on the remote that nobody
| uses. 3. Have no consistent design language or apparent
| UX research for the software's on-screen GUI, using
| misaligned clipart images and fixed-width shit-tier fonts
| for text. I used to even develop these boxes back in the
| day, and they've always been neglected engineering-wise,
| built by the lowest bidder so they are as cheap and
| fragile as humanly possible.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| To make matters worse, the old style set top boxes didn't
| even have any power management, making them electricity
| hogs and space heaters despite being so pathetically
| weak. At least the modern ARM/Android borderline-
| manufactured-ewaste-TV-product can idle with reasonably
| low power usage, but the bar is so low it's underground.
| kernal wrote:
| Google 4K TV with ProjectIvy, SmartTube and OnStream blows
| away Apple TV.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| "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!
| baggachipz wrote:
| It's the current official one, until it's killed and
| bricked for the next official one.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| There is nothing wrong with the older devices either,
| they've kept compatibility as far as the hardware is
| concerned.
|
| Ragebait belongs elsewhere, thanks.
| baggachipz wrote:
| My Chromecast and Google TV [1] beg to differ. The latter
| was unceremoniously bricked after a couple of years.
|
| [1]https://www.cnet.com/reviews/logitech-revue-google-tv-
| review...
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| That's a Logitech device with Google software, Googles
| own devices have superb support. Logitech didn't pay
| Google for support I guess.
| baggachipz wrote:
| Google discontinued the software it ran on, Logitech had
| no choice.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| Well, no such thing has happened to NVIDIA Shield or
| Googles own devices, they're the only ones I'd consider.
| "Reputable brand" is too vague I agree.
| Intermernet wrote:
| Stremio is pretty good. It has a great plugin ecosystem.
| I'm not going to say more than that.
| lostdog wrote:
| Isn't the Nvidia shield the thing they added ads to way
| after they were sold?
| gyulai wrote:
| > What's better?
|
| 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
| nyarlathotep_ wrote:
| > 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".
|
| These things just spam analytics and ad requests 24/7 too.
| The only one that's tolerable (and quite good) is Apple TV.
| oneplane wrote:
| 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.
| criddell wrote:
| Yeah, the Apple TV would be my suggestion as well even if
| it's your only Apple device. Other than streaming service
| apps (Netflix, Hulu, etc...) I think the only app I've
| installed is Tailscale. It's a great device that is
| slightly more privacy respecting than similar devices from
| Roku or Smart TV manufacturers.
|
| I've never owned a Mac before but now I'm thinking about
| getting one just so I can write software to run on my Apple
| TV. It's a pretty powerful computer that's tiny, silent,
| always on, barely uses any power, and is connected to my
| TV.
| duskwuff wrote:
| As a tip: the VLC app for Apple TV is _incredibly_
| useful. It can play video files (in essentially any
| format) from local network shares.
| criddell wrote:
| I use Plex for that and it works great.
|
| I'm going to check out VLC though. Thanks for the tip.
|
| One other app that I had and forgot about is some remote
| play client for Steam. I start Steam on my desktop PC
| then pair my PS5 remote to the Apple TV, start the Steam
| tvOS app, and I can play games from my PC on the Apple
| TV.
| Twirrim wrote:
| 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.
| alias_neo wrote:
| 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).
| baggachipz wrote:
| 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.
| alias_neo wrote:
| I had kind of hoped when I bought it, that I could put a
| better launcher on it without the almost-full-screen ads,
| which aren't always appropriate in a home with children,
| but they've blocked the ability to change the default
| launcher; there are ways to have one launch after a short
| delay, but that just annoys the missus and confuses the
| kids when it launches just after they've started scrolling
| around the stock launcher.
| nani8ot wrote:
| There's currently a exploit which allows for system user
| access. This allows disabling core FireOS features like
| forced updates (which intentionally break custom
| launchers) and also allows setting a custom launcher.
| It's simple and can be done with just an Android phone
| (or ADB).
|
| I've set Projectivy as my launcher and now it starts
| directly instead of the ad-ridden Amazon launcher.
|
| https://xdaforums.com/t/system-user-fireos7-os8-all-fire-
| cub...
| ciupicri wrote:
| What kind of ads inappropriate for children were shown by
| it?
| tracker1 wrote:
| 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.
| nyarlathotep_ wrote:
| > I wonder if the Vega stuff will be much better. There's
| really nothing to like about the Fire TV sticks.
|
| 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.
| chermi wrote:
| 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.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| Reminds me of the Sony Wega televisions.
| donperignon wrote:
| Looking at the sample apps... I think I pass, not liking much
| what I see, either generated by LLM or by an intern
| AmazingTurtle wrote:
| I bet thats gonna last for a couple years until amazon abandons
| it again.
| babuloseo wrote:
| I read that as AMD Vega OS and Vega developer tools.
| pjmlp wrote:
| So bye Android fork?
| mrandish wrote:
| 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).
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-10-03 23:01 UTC)