Author Topic: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!  (Read 6712 times)

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Offline Martin Miranda

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #25 on: January 11, 2022, 04:26:49 am »
what is designed to be thrown away?
ultrasonic welded plastic...
now i understand.  :-\
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Offline duckduck

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #26 on: January 11, 2022, 07:38:40 pm »
<SNIP>

I have never known a remote to stop working ever.

</SNIP>

I have repaired our Roku remote about 4 times before finally buying a replacement, and we just got a new remote for our cable box to replace the failed one.

Now, the problem of the young child spiking the remote like an angry footballer when asked to turn off the TV certainly points to some parenting issues...

EDIT:

That's a shame about the Fire remote. I'm sure that Amazon sells their hardware at a discount (using the disposable-razor-blade sales model). I was pleasantly surprised to find that replacement (3rd party) remotes for the Roku were only USD7 or so. Shenzhen FTW!
« Last Edit: January 11, 2022, 07:43:51 pm by duckduck »
 

Offline CJay

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #27 on: January 11, 2022, 07:46:00 pm »
Stuff the repairability, what's the chipset in there, can it be hacked and repurposed?
 

Offline etiTopic starter

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #28 on: January 11, 2022, 08:32:42 pm »
<SNIP>

I have never known a remote to stop working ever.

</SNIP>

I have repaired our Roku remote about 4 times before finally buying a replacement, and we just got a new remote for our cable box to replace the failed one.

Now, the problem of the young child spiking the remote like an angry footballer when asked to turn off the TV certainly points to some parenting issues...

EDIT:

That's a shame about the Fire remote. I'm sure that Amazon sells their hardware at a discount (using the disposable-razor-blade sales model). I was pleasantly surprised to find that replacement (3rd party) remotes for the Roku were only USD7 or so. Shenzhen FTW!

Oh... Ohhh yesss... I'd forgotten ALL about my Roku 4 remote and it's flimsy side-mounted tactile buttons which broke off... that's another one.
 

Offline Gyro

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #29 on: January 11, 2022, 09:29:23 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.

That's a hell of a lot better than the experience with the White NowTV boxes (subsidised Roku LT boxes) in the UK. They could be used with the main free UK streaming services but NowTV decided that they were no longer up to the job and stopped supporting them. Of course their last firmware update was used to disable the ability to enter developer mode by a remote button sequence, preventing them from being converted into a Plex media server or something else vaguely useful.

Power them up now and the just sit there like dumb bricks, displaying on the TV screen a message that they are no longer supported . Premeditated e-waste creation!
« Last Edit: January 11, 2022, 10:07:06 pm by Gyro »
Best Regards, Chris
 
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Offline SilverSolder

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #30 on: January 11, 2022, 10:36:16 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.

That's a hell of a lot better than the experience with the White NowTV boxes (subsidised Roku LT boxes) in the UK. They could be used with the main free UK streaming services but NowTV decided that they were no longer up to the job and stopped supporting them. Of course their last firmware update was used to disable the ability to enter developer mode by a remote button sequence, preventing them from being converted into a Plex media server or something else vaguely useful.

Power them up now and the just sit there like dumb bricks, displaying on the TV screen a message that they are no longer supported . Premeditated e-waste creation!

Another item to add to the "Why I avoid cloud services" pile?
 

Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #31 on: January 11, 2022, 10:55:43 pm »
The "All your base are belong to us" business model. :-DD
 
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Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #32 on: January 12, 2022, 03:27:32 am »
How high performance does it need to be to show TV content though?
It takes a surprising amount of compute power to upscale to 4K. The mpv upscaler I tuned for my PC uses about 30% of a 970, about 1 TFLOPS of FP32.
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Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #33 on: January 12, 2022, 06:41:34 pm »
The good thing with a free market is that if Amazon just makes crap, people will stop buying their products, right? Or will they? :popcorn:
 

Offline Gyro

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #34 on: January 12, 2022, 07:45:04 pm »
Hmm, I bought a Fire Stick lite last week, It seems pretty good so far. I bought it.... because Sony had stopped supporting streaming services on my relatively recent (in my eyes anyway!) non-Android TV.  :palm:

I had been reduced to plugging the TV into the Displayport on my laptop if I wanted to watch iPlayer or any of the other main streaming services. My logic is that the future e-waste potential of the Fire stick is smaller than trashing an, otherwise perfectly good, FHD TV and buying a new one with an unfeasibly large screen (don't get me started on 4k!).
Best Regards, Chris
 

Offline tooki

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #35 on: January 13, 2022, 12:50:45 pm »
How high performance does it need to be to show TV content though?
It takes a surprising amount of compute power to upscale to 4K. The mpv upscaler I tuned for my PC uses about 30% of a 970, about 1 TFLOPS of FP32.
Scaling just for display is typically done in hardware, though, and is thus “free”. Graphics cards have had scaler units for over 20 years now.
 

Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #36 on: January 13, 2022, 01:51:13 pm »
Scaling just for display is typically done in hardware, though, and is thus “free”. Graphics cards have had scaler units for over 20 years now.
That's a "simple" scaler designed for very low latency. For video playback where latency is of little concern, a scaler that also examines neighboring frames does much better.
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Offline tooki

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #37 on: January 13, 2022, 02:44:23 pm »
Well that’s not just a scaler, then, that’s upscaling and motion interpolation.
 

Offline Sal Ammoniac

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #38 on: January 13, 2022, 05:55:22 pm »
The Nvidia Shield TV has what they call an AI scaler, and I can confirm that scaling to 4K on the Shield is noticeably better than 4K scaling on the Fire TV (I arrived at this opinion through A/B testing, although it wasn't double blind).
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Offline blacksheeplogic

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #39 on: January 14, 2022, 01:59:40 am »
I have two Amazon “Fire TV” devices. They work, JUST…. but they run THE worst variant of the already horrendous software bodge OS ever, Android. I digress…

Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away! Yes, truly the most disgusting example of a total lack of awareness on the behalf of Amazon, that things need to be REPAIRED and not tossed and replaced. Trying to open one of their “Voice remote”  remotes, demonstrates just HOW loudly and brazenly they silently shout “Hah, screw you, buy a new one!” When you discover the sheer amount of superglue used to seal the thing shut, and to add insult to injury, when you get it open you find (amongst fragments of torn remote control parts) that they SCREWED THE PCB IN!!

Why?!!!! Morons.

You fck'd it up, take some personal responsibility. Next time try searching for a how to guide.
 
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Offline etiTopic starter

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #40 on: January 14, 2022, 03:00:07 am »
I have two Amazon “Fire TV” devices. They work, JUST…. but they run THE worst variant of the already horrendous software bodge OS ever, Android. I digress…

Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away! Yes, truly the most disgusting example of a total lack of awareness on the behalf of Amazon, that things need to be REPAIRED and not tossed and replaced. Trying to open one of their “Voice remote”  remotes, demonstrates just HOW loudly and brazenly they silently shout “Hah, screw you, buy a new one!” When you discover the sheer amount of superglue used to seal the thing shut, and to add insult to injury, when you get it open you find (amongst fragments of torn remote control parts) that they SCREWED THE PCB IN!!

Why?!!!! Morons.

You fck'd it up, take some personal responsibility. Next time try searching for a how to guide.

👏 😜

Are you free for life consultation? I’d like assistance with spatial awareness and general decision making. I can pay you in the appropriate currency - peanuts and bananas.
« Last Edit: January 14, 2022, 03:02:10 am by eti »
 

Offline Someone

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #41 on: January 14, 2022, 03:56:05 am »
For context the quote stream needs a rebuild:
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.
I'm disappointed Nvidia haven't upgraded it by much compared to the original in 2015. Mainly just a slightly faster version of the same CPU, 3GB RAM while the much cheaper Raspberry Pi 4 is available with 8GB.

I would say that a PC would be the most future proof, although obviously for a higher budget. Would be an interesting challenge to see how much it would cost to build a PC (using only new parts) with performance comparable to a Shield TV. Back when the original Shield TV was new, building a PC with equivalent performance would be a lot more expensive. I'd be surprised if that's still the case nowadays.
How high performance does it need to be to show TV content though?   I've always used middling PC builds to run projectors etc. (playing dvd and BluRay rips) and it was a pretty good experience overall...
It takes a surprising amount of compute power to upscale to 4K. The mpv upscaler I tuned for my PC uses about 30% of a 970, about 1 TFLOPS of FP32.
Scaling just for display is typically done in hardware, though, and is thus “free”. Graphics cards have had scaler units for over 20 years now.
That's a "simple" scaler designed for very low latency. For video playback where latency is of little concern, a scaler that also examines neighboring frames does much better.
Well that’s not just a scaler, then, that’s upscaling and motion interpolation.
... that higher end TVs do internally already (examples as far back as 25 years at least).

Live TV is so compressed through the chain that its unlikely to benefit much, and the decoder/de-interlace is a bigger influence.

Complaining that outdated/low end/cheap device doesn't do your preferred cutting edge image processing (for gains of a few dB in PSNR), lol. Also, people have traditionally (and still do) the expensive video operations offline for later playback with minimum overhead.
 

Offline Someone

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #42 on: January 14, 2022, 03:58:24 am »
Are you free for life consultation? I’d like assistance with spatial awareness and general decision making. I can pay you in the appropriate currency - peanuts and bananas.
Bananas I'll happily accept as payment, 42kg per hour. However, peanuts might be cheaper for your delivery costs, 14kg per hour.
 

Offline etiTopic starter

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #43 on: January 14, 2022, 04:37:24 am »
Are you free for life consultation? I’d like assistance with spatial awareness and general decision making. I can pay you in the appropriate currency - peanuts and bananas.
Bananas I'll happily accept as payment, 42kg per hour. However, peanuts might be cheaper for your delivery costs, 14kg per hour.

I don’t think I’d replied to you. 😎
 

Offline tooki

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #44 on: January 14, 2022, 07:33:40 am »
For context the quote stream needs a rebuild:

... that higher end TVs do internally already (examples as far back as 25 years at least).

Live TV is so compressed through the chain that its unlikely to benefit much, and the decoder/de-interlace is a bigger influence.

Complaining that outdated/low end/cheap device doesn't do your preferred cutting edge image processing (for gains of a few dB in PSNR), lol. Also, people have traditionally (and still do) the expensive video operations offline for later playback with minimum overhead.
Don’t basically all TVs now have motion interpolation? I don’t think I’ve seen any TV larger than 32” without motion interpolation for probably 15 years.
 

Offline jonovid

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #45 on: January 14, 2022, 08:13:23 am »
when it comes to the design of TV remotes I could write a whole book about them from an end user's point of view.
some key points in question
can it be repaired? are the button contacts accessible without destructive disassembly.
design TV remotes that are easy to clean. water resistant.
a plastic case design that does not have lots of cracks & crevices in it.
make it two remotes not just one, when you purchase a new TV or TV consumer entertainment technology
if a TV remote is so cheap. why not add or sell a second or spare remote so if the first is lost or damaged beyond repair
you still got a working spare remote when the TV or TV product is no longer in production. if this is all too much to ask  |O
then at least design all the buttons needed on the face of the TV or TV entertainment technology so it will still be functional without a remote.
so simple
have better more functional button layout design that better reflects today's lifestyle .  as to have 3 or 4 AV one button pess auxiliary inputs.
the TV channel number buttons are longer the dominant use of buttons, as many TV sets get used as video monitors. so auxiliary inputs need separate buttons
one per auxiliary input. if your TV has 4 HDMI inputs then the TV remote should have 4 separate AV-in buttons. ;D

the case for better TV remote design on big expensive TV technology.
touch if you can see it, feel if you can not. why TV remotes need tactile or raised buttons for use in the dark. 
why not backlight illumination of rubbery buttons. this type of technology was used on many of the first cell phones that had buttons.
most TV remotes live in a dark room . if design has movement detection then the TV remote will light up in the dark if grabbed.
finding a lost TV remote? the TV is easy to see , so design a paging button on it. so the remote will beep here I am down the back of the sofa.
it's about time TV remotes got a lithium ion battery in its design, as with most other cheap consumer electronics.

anything voice activated must have an off button or some of us will be un-plugging the TV or bitching bettys talking cyclops box from the wall.   >:D
privacy starts with less electronics not more. the life off-line without the phone.
« Last Edit: January 14, 2022, 08:19:54 am by jonovid »
Hobbyist with a basic knowledge of electronics
 

Offline PlainName

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #46 on: January 14, 2022, 06:30:46 pm »
Quote
I could write a whole book about them from an end user's point of view.
some key points in question
can it be repaired?

You're writing from an engineer's, or hobbyist's, point of view. A normal end user's point of view would be: can it be replaced?

Your average TV viewer knows nothing of these things and no-one is going to pay the going rate to fix it - just the time taking it apart would cost more than a new one. All they care about, if they even think that far ahead, is that they can get a replacement off Ebay or whatever.

 

Offline Sal Ammoniac

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #47 on: January 14, 2022, 07:02:51 pm »
One thing I didn't like about the Fire TV remote is that it's small and totally black (the white icons on the buttons wore off a long time ago). It's easy to lose in the dark (I have a projector setup in a light-controlled room and the ambient light is very low). Some of my other remotes have glow-in-the-dark buttons, and that makes it easy to find them in the dark when I drop them.
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Offline Someone

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #48 on: January 14, 2022, 09:50:13 pm »
higher end TVs do internally already (examples as far back as 25 years at least).

Live TV is so compressed through the chain that its unlikely to benefit much, and the decoder/de-interlace is a bigger influence.
Don’t basically all TVs now have motion interpolation? I don’t think I’ve seen any TV larger than 32” without motion interpolation for probably 15 years.
I'm still seeing cheaper TVs that don't advertise any such features, or have any menu options for it (including 4k models). It might be a fixed option thats silently included, but I cant be bothered to get out the test equipment to find out. Always on interpolation, just as bad as none, I like film cadence for what it is.
 

Offline tooki

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Re: Amazon “Fire TV” remotes - DESIGNED to be thrown away!
« Reply #49 on: January 14, 2022, 10:44:26 pm »
Well, if you’ve seen them, I won’t dispute it — I haven’t looked that carefully, I’ll admit!

I’m torn on motion interpolation — I really do like it on things like pans and credits, but I also don’t like for everything to look like a daytime soap opera. On my Panasonic plasma, it seems relatively tame, so I leave it on.
 


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