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Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
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Rick Law:

--- Quote from: tooki on January 10, 2022, 06:22:16 pm ---...
Labor costs time. Suppose it takes 30 minutes to repair a remote control (when you include diagnosis, repair, retesting, paperwork, etc). A typical going rate for electronics repair in a developed country might be around $100/hr. So that’s $50 in labor right there. Who in their right mind would pay that when a brand new one costs that much or less??

They’re not morons for not worrying about repairability on a product that almost never fails, and stands a nearly 0% chance of being repaired if it does.

There are some truly egregious instances of wasteful non-repairability, but this truly does not qualify.

--- End quote ---

You are certainly right about the labor cost and chance of repair, but, for the kinds of remotes included with a system, it may have many device-specific keys that is not available on a generic replacement universal remote.

eBay used to be a good place to buy a used remote for a device - I had purchased a few, one for a Samsung TV, and two for WD TV-live.  These days, for whatever reason, I don't see much of those used remotes on sale at eBay anymore.

So, lucky for me that my remote's failure was not a 100% failure (works for a few keys immediately after battery removal and reinsertion), I could use a learning remote to learn the keys.  Otherwise I am left with finding a remote for a specific device or repair to regain all remote features.  Reasonably priced replacement remotes from OEM is probably the best choice.
Sal Ammoniac:
Forget the remotes... Amazon Fire TV devices themselves are designed to be thrown away!

This is how it works: Amazon designs and sells a Fire TV device, like the Cube. It mostly works fine and the UI is responsive. They then come out with a series of newer models with updated, faster CPUs and more RAM. They add new features to the software that takes advantage of the increased CPU power and additional RAM... But now the older devices run like dogs and the UI is slow and laggy and nearly unusable. The only viable solution is to upgrade to the latest Fire TV device.

Rather than continuing on the Fire TV treadmill, I've switched to a Nvidia Shield TV Pro. Hopefully it won't have the planned obsolescence issue Fire TV does.
edavid:

--- Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on January 10, 2022, 10:41:19 pm ---This is how it works: Amazon designs and sells a Fire TV device, like the Cube. It mostly works fine and the UI is responsive. They then come out with a series of newer models with updated, faster CPUs and more RAM. They add new features to the software that takes advantage of the increased CPU power and additional RAM... But now the older devices run like dogs and the UI is slow and laggy and nearly unusable. The only viable solution is to upgrade to the latest Fire TV device.

--- End quote ---

I am still using a Fire TV Stick from 2018, and I haven't noticed any performance problems in the UI or any of the streaming apps that I use.  Of course it's connected to a 720p TV  :-//

Sal Ammoniac:

--- Quote from: edavid on January 10, 2022, 11:18:20 pm ---
--- Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on January 10, 2022, 10:41:19 pm ---This is how it works: Amazon designs and sells a Fire TV device, like the Cube. It mostly works fine and the UI is responsive. They then come out with a series of newer models with updated, faster CPUs and more RAM. They add new features to the software that takes advantage of the increased CPU power and additional RAM... But now the older devices run like dogs and the UI is slow and laggy and nearly unusable. The only viable solution is to upgrade to the latest Fire TV device.

--- End quote ---

I am still using a Fire TV Stick from 2018, and I haven't noticed any performance problems in the UI or any of the streaming apps that I use.  Of course it's connected to a 720p TV  :-//



--- End quote ---

You're lucky. I had a Fire TV Cube about two years old that gradually got slower and more laggy with each new FW update until I ditched it for the Shield Pro. The last straw was the complete UI overhaul that came out a few months ago that was very poorly designed and implemented. It's almost like they hired an expert on user experience to design their new UI and then did the exact opposite of what he recommended. And then there's all the bugs and crashes...  :palm:
SilverSolder:

--- Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on January 10, 2022, 10:41:19 pm ---Forget the remotes... Amazon Fire TV devices themselves are designed to be thrown away!

This is how it works: Amazon designs and sells a Fire TV device, like the Cube. It mostly works fine and the UI is responsive. They then come out with a series of newer models with updated, faster CPUs and more RAM. They add new features to the software that takes advantage of the increased CPU power and additional RAM... But now the older devices run like dogs and the UI is slow and laggy and nearly unusable. The only viable solution is to upgrade to the latest Fire TV device.

Rather than continuing on the Fire TV treadmill, I've switched to a Nvidia Shield TV Pro. Hopefully it won't have the planned obsolescence issue Fire TV does.

--- End quote ---

That sounds like the business model for smartphones too...    fill them with "updates" that destroy them,  keep the cycle of "improvements" going...
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