this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
-101 points (1.9% liked)
Technology
59441 readers
4056 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Honestly it's just a glorified Google TV with a nicer remote. I feel like the only Fire TV device that might be interesting enough to consider buying would be the Fire Cube or the Fire Recast but IDEK if they still work anymore.
While based on Google TV, they lock down the OS, control the app store, and force their apps. You're in their walled garden and it's a pain to break out in any meaningful way.
Hmm...well it's been a couple years since I used my Fire Stick but I remember being able to sideload Android TV apps on there just like I can now with my Google TV device.
If I recall you still can through ADB, but it's a pain and they started locking that down too. Ad blocking VPN (at least the one I tried) didn't work.
There was a big update about a year ago that very clearly sent the message "this device will show what we want you to see."
Ah, that doesn't shock me. Yeah I left when they started like disabling custom launchers or something, and I realized getting a Google TV would be easier than getting around that restriction.