will Emby support new Firestick OS?

[justinrh 175]

Time To Dump The Amazon Firestick - Use These 4 Streaming Devices Instead - YouTube

Amazon is going to replace the Android OS with some proprietary thing.  Will Emby still support the Firestick platform?

[RanmaCanada 354]

Don't see why not. It's only newer products that will be replaced with this garbage. As it will be linux based, it should be far easier for the dev team to work on things.

[TMCsw 123]

1 hour ago, RanmaCanada said:

It's only newer products that will be replaced with this garbage.

What do you mean by 'newer products' everything I've read about this new OS says that it will be pushed to most existing fire devices/tv out there.

Oh, I'm not looking forward to this... ...but emby(Luke) has said (somewhere on this forum) they expect to have a client for this quickly...  

[RanmaCanada 354]

Everything I've read is that existing products will be on FireOS and only new purchased products will have Vega. None of our currently owned devices will be upgraded, period.

AFTVNews speculates that current Fire TV device owners might not see the new operating system installed on their TV or streaming device, as Amazon does not even roll out new versions of the Fire TV OS to all devices currently. That could necessitate a new line of smart TVs and streaming devices that run on Vega as opposed to Fire TV’s software, which would in turn allow Amazon to collect more revenue from the sale of those devices.

This is as of February 2024.

Think about this..they try to do an OTA update and your device bricks. 10's if not 100's of millions of tech illiterate people worldwide would be up in arms about losing their ability to watch TV. It's far easier, and more economically vialble to force users to buy a new product with the new OS by gradually ignoring and or locking out the old ones and force people to upgrade like how the first gen firesticks and fireTV are basically useless today. Look on these forums and realize that the most frustrating users who have no clue about what they are talking about and who attack us experts when we explain why they are wrong, are STILL smarter than 90% of the general population when it comes to tech. That's what Amazon would be dealing with in regards to doing and OTA upgrade to Vega.

[TMCsw 123]

I hope your right but…

OS updates are done regularly on almost every computer device out there, just look at:

• Win10 it’s been through so many 2xHx. Now there trying to annoy people enough so they upgrade to Win11
• My Samsung Galaxy S8+ was on android 7.0 when I bought it and now is on android 9.0 (this was pushed and did not brick it) (ya this old device still works fine)
• My android tablet has also been pushed up 2 major versions
• I used to be able to be able to change my default launcher on the fire sticks, but OS upgrades have made that undo-able without rooting them. (ya, I’ve stopped the add's long ago with pi-hole but this just leaves large/most parts of the screen blank)

Sure a small percentage of these upgrades end up bricking some devices (but most of these are the result of idiots screwing with there device (usually trying to get something for free))

Edited April 28 by TMCsw

[Luke 37155]

Hi, yes we will.

[softworkz 3341]

2 hours ago, TMCsw said:

OS updates are done regularly on almost every computer device out there, just look at:

• Win10 it’s been through so many 2xHx. Now there trying to annoy people enough so they upgrade to Win11
• My Samsung Galaxy S8+ was on android 7.0 when I bought it and now is on android 9.0 (this was pushed and did not brick it) (ya this old device still works fine)
• My android tablet has also been pushed up 2 major versions
• I used to be able to be able to change my default launcher on the fire sticks, but OS upgrades have made that undo-able without rooting them. (ya, I’ve stopped the add's long ago with pi-hole but this just leaves large/most parts of the screen blank)

It's not an OS "Update". It's an entirely different OS, so none of your examples really applies..

[TMCsw 123]

Actually it’s not really an "entirely different" OS it’s just a different customization of Linux (Presumably divorced from the android version).

It’s common knowledge that they sell these devices bellow cost and have been continually changing the software (OS) to better ensure that people see the adds. This is just the next step.

If it get pushed to existing devices or not is still in question(in my mind anyway)..

[signde 25]

Given that they do not even push major FireOS versions to devices that didn't originally ship with them, I think the chances of pushing Vega to current devices are slim to none.

[softworkz 3341]

15 minutes ago, TMCsw said:

Actually it’s not really an "entirely different" OS it’s just a different customization of Linux

 

When you download the Android source code, you get 60-80 GB on your disk. The amount ot Linux code (kernel+core services) makes less than 2% of that.

So I think it's valid to say that it's something entirely different than Vega.

Anyway, the relavant part is that all Android apps which users have would not be working anymore.

15 minutes ago, TMCsw said:

If it get pushed to existing devices or not is still in question(in my mind anyway)..

Pushed - no way!

Optionally? By theory possible after user consent on loosing everything they have installed - but who would consent to that? Thousands of apps - against....zero? (except the few ones built-in). But maybe for developers, that would make sense.

That's at least the situation at the time of writing. Right now, there's doesn't even exist an SDK, it's not possible to develop anything for that platform. They might have a few early adopters on board (like Netflix & Co.), but given there's no published SDK yet, it's all in a state where it's definitely no fun to develop (things continuously under change). 

It's a simple formula: No apps - no success. The number of 3rd party apps is zero at this time and when they want to sell new devices, they need to have a significant figure of apps to make any sales. Once they have an SDK out, I would expect at least another 12 months before this gets any traction.

[TMCsw 123]

1 hour ago, softworkz said:

When you download the Android source code, you get 60-80 GB on your disk. The amount ot Linux code (kernel+core services) makes less than 2% of that.

I’m not saying that there isn’t a whole lot of awesome programming being done to the Linux base and I’m not saying x% of that 60-80GB is improved FOSS but some of it is..

1 hour ago, softworkz said:

Anyway, the relavant part is that all Android apps which users have would not be working anymore.

If that’s true, than that's a big game changer! then why would anyone buy a new Fire device that only supports a few of the big streamers (Netflix and such) this would be like shooting themselves in the heart.

If Vega doesn’t support Android apps (at least to start) it’s DOA to me.

[softworkz 3341]

5 minutes ago, TMCsw said:

2 hours ago, softworkz said:

Anyway, the relavant part is that all Android apps which users have would not be working anymore.

If that’s true, than that's a big game changer!

Android apps need an Android OS to run  - or an emulation layer like WSA - which is essentially full Android. But this is in no way feasible with their low-cost hardware strategy.

They already stated that apps for Vega will be more like web apps (also mentioning React) - which is why Luke is expecting it to be relatively easy to support the platform. 

Just recently, Amazon and MS have announced the discontinuation of the Amazon App Store on Windows, which will be closed within 12 Months and has already been removed from the MS Store for installation. This is once another indication that Amazon is done with Android all along the line.

19 minutes ago, TMCsw said:

then why would anyone buy a new Fire device that only supports a few of the big streamers (Netflix and such) this would be like shooting themselves in the heart.

If Vega doesn’t support Android apps (at least to start) it’s DOA to me.

They also said that the reason for moving away from Android is that it would be too bloated with features and services specific to phones and that they couldn't achieve the desired performance on the (low cost) hardware due to this. If they would run an Android layer on Vega, none of this would be achieved. It would even double-up memory requirements.

Right now, they are already running 32bit versions of Android (even though the hardware could do 64bit) - just to reduce RAM requirements.

 

It's a risky strategy of theirs, and I have my doubts on whether this will work out well. Low retail prices alone can't remedy the lack of apps. Maybe there's some other component in their strategy that we don't know about yet..

[ebr 14947]

14 hours ago, softworkz said:

Maybe there's some other component in their strategy that we don't know about yet..

My guess is that component is some sort of commitment on the part of the "big guys" to support the new platform.  However, in the end, Amazon is selling you an Amazon device to push Amazon content and products so maybe they actually don't care that much about that...