The enshittification will continue until moral improves.
The EU seems to be the only major entity actually trying at this point.
“Wow, I can’t believe these fire sticks are so cheap”
Bought an early one. Used it for less than a year.
I still have it. Can they be flashed with Lineage or something?
Only old firmwares
Experienced this for the first time yesterday. It’s my dad paying for Amazon, and we mutually discovered we couldn’t skip the ad. Asked him, “aren’t you gonna boycott it now?”, and he told me no. “Not too much of an issue”, he said. This is the attitude that enables enshittification.
Fuck that. High seas it is, they can kiss my ass. I will not pay to watch advertisements.
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.
You can update the TVs settings to block these new large video ads. However, Amazon is getting more and more intrusive with its ads. I imagine that, similar to the Alexa Shows that I also use, every few weeks they’ll tweak the ads, making your previous “disable this” settings no longer applicable. It’s technically a new ad type, so they can auto enable it again. Super frustrating.
Largely in response to these new autoplay ads, I replaced my Fire TV with an LG TV. I’ve got another LG TV from only a few years ago that doesn’t really have ads. This one… does. Damn it. Don’t get me wrong, they’re much less in-your-face when compared to Amazon’s ads. But, damn, does everything just have to be ads now?
Currently using a Roku Streambar for all of our streaming needs but if they pull this crap, everything we consume will be downloaded, served on my Plex server and streamed using the gaming PC I have under our TV.
Getting beyond sick of these companies using every measure and device they can to shit ads into our eyes.
What OS are you using for the gaming pc under your TV? Wanted to do something alike but don’t know what would be the best OS for something like that
The best OS for your HTPC is whatever OS you’re comfortable with
As I wrote on the other comment, I was looking for something easy and fast to use even if I’m on the couch. Something that i could set to almost look like a smart tv but that could also work with steam link/moonlight. So honestly I’m comfortable with windows but don’t think it would be the best OS to use for my case
i mostly use windows on the tv, an old laptop and a wireless kb/trackpad. runs cool, even with the lid closed all the time. reliably wakes up outputting to the external ‘monitor’ as long as it hasn’t ‘lost’ its connection to the tv (can’t unplug that input temporarily for another device–would have to flip open the laptop lid later to re-enable the external-only setting), and it’s new enough (skylake) to have decoding in hardware for the formats i’ve been using.
the other hdmi is a linux sff desktop set up similarly, but i haven’t got all the kinks worked out yet.
use firefox (with addons and some userscripts|styles) for online sites, and usb externals or lan connection for ‘saved’ content. shortcuts on the desktop (to web sites, playlists, lan shares) function as the ‘home screen’ or ‘launch’ page.
i do have the tv ‘online’ atm, though, because a lot of pluto ‘live’ tv get watched here, and the tv ‘app’ is faster and more reliable than their web site. the remote has a hotkey for it, too, which goes directly to the last ‘channel’ it was on.
Thanks for the thorough explanation! So you just use windows on the old laptop, no Kodi or anything else?
yup. just windows (or linux) desktop applications and networking. i don’t need a ‘10-foot’ ui; and don’t (atm, anyway) need the remote streaming capabilities or other features of a jellyfin or plex.
the keyboard i have is an original logitech k400. it’s really the piece that makes my setup usable, otherwise i’d have a full-sized separate kb and mouse sitting on the ‘coffee table’ (it’s really just a low-standing tv shelf on wheels) instead.
Yeah that’s a nice keyboard, maybe i’ll think about it because it seems really useful and compact at the same time! Thank you again for everything :)
My Roku is pie holed, I don’t Even get the main screen ads anymore.
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Did you order it on Amazon?
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this is just a smidgen of the first-world’s self-inflicted punishment. very excited to see what happens next.
awesome! i love unskippable ads! especially when i pay monthly to even use the service! bezos always getting W’s!!!
No end to the greed of these corporations.
You can skip them. It’s more like a screen saver than anything.
Didn’t know they made CRTs that support a FireTV stick.
Skip Skip Skip, you’ve used up all your skips. Upgrade Now for more skips. No thanks I’ll have my mp3s. 1600 fit on a 16G thumb for $3.89/ea. At that price I gift them to friends to hold for backups. I own them. My mp3s will outlive the sun.
Well, you get what you pay for. It’s very cheap for a reason: you are the product.
I got an Apple TV in 2018 and it’s still working perfectly. Yes, it was expensive, but it has no ads, it’s still fast and responsive, and it still gets updates.
And Google Tv just did this. Sigh
Ever since getting a fire stick I’ve been hooking my laptop up to the tv instead. Now I can play games, watch movies, shows, etc
Our household completely ditched all Amazon products and services 4 or so years ago and never looked back. I shop local and on alternative sites for everything, it took a little adjusting at first. I think we have had to buy something from Amazon maybe once or twice in the last 4 years because I we couldn’t get it anywhere else. A few months ago I switched the 1 Amazon product we had owned forever, a Fire Stick to a Roku the first company I had ever used a streaming device from 10-15 years ago, I thought briefly about wiping the Fire Stick and donating it, but decided to toss it with the thought of adding someone else’s user data to the Bezos empire.
This lemmy thread is brought to you by <insert-vpn-or-mobile-game>.
Can we start invoicing these companies for the ads they make us watch? They should be paying us.
my parents keep buying Amazon FireTV devices and they are so annoying and underpowered. I want them to just buy an HTPC or something, but they wont listen cuz thats more expensive, even tho they’ve been through multiple Fire TVs cuz they crap out
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.
