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Android

Amazon is Ditching Android for Fire TVs, Smart Displays (lowpass.cc) 50

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
Lowpass: Amazon has been working on a new operating system to replace Android on Fire TVs, smart displays and other connected devices, I have learned from talking to multiple sources with knowledge of these plans, as well as job listings and other materials referencing these efforts. Development of the new operating system, which is internally known as Vega, appears fairly advanced. The system has already been tested on Fire TV streaming adapters, and Amazon has told select partners about its plans to transition to a new application framework in the near future. A source with knowledge of the company's plans suggested that it could start shipping Vega on select Fire TV devices as early as next year.
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Amazon is Ditching Android for Fire TVs, Smart Displays More

Amazon is Ditching Android for Fire TVs, Smart Displays

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  • I am surprise they had Android to begin with when their Fire tablets dont. Just a piss poor skinning of it.

  • TFA Takeaway (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jhon ( 241832 ) on Thursday November 09, 2023 @04:08PM (#63993851) Homepage Journal

    "What Amazon really cares about is reaching hundreds of millions of eyeballs on a wide range of inexpensive devices, and then monetizing those eyeballs with ads and services – and a custom OS built-in house may just be the best way to do that."

    I prefer Fire Stick/Fire TV over other android devices (many reasons). If they switch platforms (which would mean no real way to side-load androids apps on Amazon gizmos) I'll ditch Amazon stuff in favor of generic Android devices.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Shakrai ( 717556 )

      What's your rationale for sticking with any of these products? I view every digital media player as a spyware device. Some (Apple TV) have better privacy policies/approaches than others (anything Amazon) but ever since TiVo came onto the scene all of these devices have collected information on end users.

      Buddy of mine just uses an old PC, running Linux, and streams via web browser, with wireless keyboard/mouse for control. The vast majority of streaming services will play nice with Chrome on Linux. The

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jhon ( 241832 )

        "What's your rationale for sticking with any of these products? I view every digital media player as a spyware device."

        Simple answer: They're cheap and easy to navigate. I'm not concerned about "spyware" reporting back what I watch data going home to Amazon as much as wife and kids complaining about navigating with a remote keyboard and mouse. I do have one set up like you describe and it works fine -- for me. It's in our guest room/my home office. The "mouse" is cool as it's not a pad or a bottom navi

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Shakrai ( 717556 )

          Hey, if you're cool with the spying, all the power to you. In some respects I don't care either, it's mostly all aggregated, and you obviously can't hide your Disney+ watching history from Disney, so who cares if Apple/Google/Amazon has it too?

          Where it gets too creepy for me is when it is then used to individualize ads on other devices. That kind of cross device tracking is Creepy AF. It's one of the reasons -- if not the primary reason -- that the streaming players are all adopting ads. They realized

      • Buddy of mine just uses an old PC, running Linux, and streams via web browser, with wireless keyboard/mouse for control.

        That's the setup I used to use in the early 2000s to watch DivX ;-) encoded movies. These days though, the idea of connecting a full PC to a television to steam content just seems silly and needlessly complicated. Not to mention lacking in the whole wife/partner approval factor department when you're talking about a living room TV.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Shakrai ( 717556 )

          Not to mention lacking in the whole wife/partner approval factor department when you're talking about a living room TV.

          Yeah, it probably goes without saying my buddy lives alone, although, his (long distance) partner is a fellow techie and I've never heard her complain when operating his setup. He also leverages OTA for local channels, mostly for news, and those do work with the traditional remote. My partner would kill me if I tried to do this, lol, but at least I got her onto the Apple TV (she hates Apple products) which is a bit better on privacy than Amazon.

          It would be possible if anyone cared to invest the time to r

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Jhon ( 241832 )

            "He also leverages OTA for local channels, mostly for news"

            Ditto. I use a 2 tuner Tablo (not the latest version -- mine's 4 years old now). I've got it set up to nightly download recorded OTA tv shows (again, mostly news, but some old TV shows (Dick Van Dyke, I Love Lucy, etc) and the occasional new TV series episodes). My script drops them in to appropriate folders that are accessed through my HT software.

            While the device skips commercials (for a yearly fee), the downloaded episodes don't benefit from t

          • I used MythTV back in the 2000s too because on demand Internet streaming was not a thing and DVRs held at most 40 hours of shows and movies. My media server was a tower with 6 HDDs and each room had a SFF controlled with a consumer remote attached to a TV so you could watch recordings or ripped movies anytime you wanted. It was close to a thousand hours of content. When cable started going digital and encrypting, it became more and more of a hassle to keep maintaining it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Merk42 ( 1906718 )

        I view every digital media player as a spyware device.

        Buddy of mine just uses an old PC, running Linux, and streams via web browser, with wireless keyboard/mouse for control.

        How does that setup get around the spying? Isn't any of the spying just {ACCOUNT} viewed {CONTENT} which could easily be done in the browser too?

    • Re:TFA Takeaway (Score:4, Interesting)

      by flatt ( 513465 ) on Thursday November 09, 2023 @05:10PM (#63994083) Journal

      If they switch platforms (which would mean no real way to side-load androids apps on Amazon gizmos) I'll ditch Amazon stuff in favor of generic Android devices.

      Literally the only reason I ended up settling on Amazon devices is the ability to side-load Android apps. The ability to run Kodi and RetroArch on my FireTV is a huge value-add, otherwise I can't think of any reason to allow Amazon into my home.

      • otherwise I can't think of any reason to allow Amazon into my home.

        I like their spy speakers for controlling my Tuya smart lighting and setting kitchen timers.

        Me: "Alexa, set a timer for 13 minutes!"
        Alexa: "13 minutes, starting now."
        My partner (from the other room): "When will the cinnamon buns be done?"
        Me: "Ask Alexa."
        Alexa: "Sorry, I don't know that one.
        Me: "Damn it Alexa, I wasn't talking to you!"

        See all the fun you're missing out on?

    • I used to be a pretty big fan of Fire Sticks too, because they were cheap and it was reasonably easy enough to sideload Kodi. I've since switched to Walmart's Onn streaming device [walmart.com] after Amazon's updates began making my Fire Sticks really laggy.

      Another nice bonus of having Google's Play Store is that I don't even have to sideload Kodi anymore; it's officially available on the app store. Amazon on the other hand would prefer that you spend money on their pay-per-view offerings, rather than watch stuff you'v

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jhon ( 241832 )

        I have an Onn. It's not too bad. I've had issues with audio and bluetooth with it, though.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kriston ( 7886 )

        The Fire TV Cube 1st and 2nd generations got really laggy, too. I was able to trade them up for the current version which is very snappy and fast.

  • So no more Kodi? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ukoda ( 537183 ) on Thursday November 09, 2023 @04:15PM (#63993863) Homepage
    Fire TV devices were my go to devices until recently for running Kodi and other media apps as they were relatively cheap, played back well and have a nice remote. However recent version drops out of apps back to the Fire TV home page when you turn on the connected TV.

    If you only need Kodi, and not other Android apps, then the 2GB RPI4 running LibreELEC and a replacement Fire TV remote are the way to go.

    Amazon won't be sad to see me not buy more of their hardware as it is the subscriptions they are really selling. I wouldn't mind betting the move from Android to Vega is for commercial, not technical, reasons i.e. more lock in and control of users.
    • Vega will just be android with some different bits. I bet over 99% of it will be shared.
      Why would Amazon do anything actually new when they can just rebrand something old for much cheaper.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

      > and a replacement Fire TV remote are the way to go.

      Did you mean the actual Firestick remote? Can you re-purpose it for use with the RPi, or did you mean some other generic remote?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ukoda ( 537183 )
        I have purchased replacement Fire TV remotes from China, they feel on par with the genuine ones and work well. Very good value for money, https://www.aliexpress.com/ite... [aliexpress.com]. You should be able to repurpose original Amazon remotes, if you can force them into pairing mode. There is more than one generation of Amazon remote so you may finds some models can't be used. Given the cheap price of replacements I wouldn't lose sleep over it.

        The biggest hassle was getting some of the less important keys mapped t

    • I didn't buy it for this, but ended up with using a refurb 2014 mac mini as a media centre. My Fire stick hasn't been used since. Sure I have to use a mouse and keyboard, but it runs everything and can be controlled over ssh, which is nice. So I use VLC instances with http and telnet so that they can be controlled remotely either by web or by scripts.

    • I've done the Kodi on Pi4 thing and it's just barely adequate performance wise. The Onn streaming device Walmart sells is significantly faster and is much cheaper than a Pi4 with all the necessary paraphernalia.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ukoda ( 537183 )
        You have to run it on LibreELEC and then the performance is fine, even with the 2GB variant. I tried it under OpenWRT and the normal RPI desktop OS and Kodi was unusable with them.
        • Pi HW: Pi 4 Model B - 4GB v1.1 LibreELEC sometimes runs fine, sometimes runs like trash.
          Sometimes it feels as bad as my old Fire Stick that I got rid of.
          Online wisdom is to "reinstall fresh", like it was a version of windows or some shit.

          Apple TV that replaced it is nice and snappy, and who needs Kodi when you have Plex?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ukoda ( 537183 )
            One thing different about how I run it is LibreELEC is PXE booted and everything is access from NFS, so no SD card in the RPI to cause issues. Uptime is 7 days with zero issues, so to be fair probably too soon to say how it will go long term, but so far rock solid. Certainly way more stable than the early model Fire TV it replaced.
            • I would not be surprised if my SD card played a role in the crappiness.
              Running RPis have taught me that SD cards in general are shit.

              • Samsung Evo cards in relatively high capacities are AFAIK best for playing primary storage. Anything big enough to require SDXC will usually have the better controller. For some reason they are the random access champs. Not just for writes but for reads too...

                • Unsure what vendor I've got in them right now. But what I recall, nearly universally, is that their write performance degrades very quickly, from decent, to hideously slow. I also had several fail with bad sectors, that I assume are write-capacity related.

                  All in all, I get the impression that SDs weren't designed with high TBW counts... but I don't know that for a fact, it would just jive very well with observations.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by ukoda ( 537183 )
                    One dirty little secret of SD cards is they will fail if you read them continuously, such as looping video playback. If you read from them a lot you need to pause every so often to allow the controller in the card to rewrite memory locations that have been read too much. It issues is know as Read Disturb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].

  • Linux again (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Thursday November 09, 2023 @04:19PM (#63993873)

    Hilarious how these bigcorp code monkeys love to cosplay as operating system designers when they are really just rolling their own, crappy, Linux skin like any other distribution.

  • either doesn thave the infra structure to allow them to satuate the viewer with adverts or allows other people to capture all that data they want or both,

  • What would be nice is if Amazon could make Vega open source, perhaps with a VOSP model if there is secret sauce involved. I am curious to see how they are handling the JavaScript stuff, as well as internal security.

    Especially internal security. Will they use the Android model and use Linux's users for app IDs, or will they use a container/jail model like iOS? How will they move data between apps? How will they do disk encryption, be it md-crypt like older Android versions, or fscrypt like newer?

    Given ch

  • What does it remind me of? (Score:3)

    by Lispy ( 136512 ) on Thursday November 09, 2023 @04:39PM (#63993939) Homepage

    A Linux platform with Javascript applications...wait...where have I seen this before? Ah, WebOS!
    But I guess more competition in that field is a good thing, especially from a player as big as Amazon. Curious how it turns out a few years down the road...

  • I am actually one of the person who has owned firephone. I bought it when they almost discontinued it and paid 199. For that price it was definitely worth it. My single biggest complaint was its use of FireOS instead of Android and I have posted this in many of other social network form and WA groups. This is definitely good for them because their hardware is worth the price but OS is what is dragging down the most.

  • Yet another format (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Cyberglich ( 525256 ) on Thursday November 09, 2023 @04:54PM (#63993999)
    Smaller streamers will not like having to maintain yet another app. Why there's some that don't have Ruku apps.

  • Vincent Vega

    We all know where this is going, doesn't take long before Vincent shoots Marvin in the face.

  • I've had numerous friends and family tell me I need to order a fire stick from sketchy dude because he hacks it and makes all of the pay stuff free. Of course sketchy dude requires a subscription to get his updates when Amazon updates their code. I love the hypocrisy!

  • Those guys just LOVE to re-invent the wheel, no matter how good existing solutions are from competitors. I mean, a change like this wouldn't affect me in the least. I don't even own any of their streaming TV products. But I can't see how they think an existing open-source Android based solution is so much worse for them than rolling their own that they'd expend the manpower/time/money on it?

    (That said, this is the same company that wrote a really crappy/buggy video-chat client, "Chime", to use internally ju

  • They will never build an app base and pretty much no one cares about prime video

  • Well, this is going to do wonders for that trailing market share [pixalate.com] FireTV has.

    They're selling their own TVs instead of licensing out to manufacturers. Prime Video is a mess. Alexa is a smash success, but it isn't providing uptake to the TV service. Now they want to implement a custom OS that steaming services will need to rewrite their apps for?

    Streaming devices are already fragmented as it is. Taking the also-ran status of your device and forking its software... not smart. I'm going to assume they're not wri

  • Amazon's dislike of Android seems to center on the fact that they couldn't keep up with the OS revisions. They are running on Android 9 with its 902 CVEs. So they have a miserable DevSecOps approach to Fire ... will they really do any better with Linux?
  • To me, it doesn't make sense to have to throw out a perfectly good TV screen when its built-in media player is no longer supported/workable/gets too intrusive/annoying. This is a case where screens should just be screens, nothing else, & you plug whatever media players, consoles, or whatever into them. Media players are small, cheap things with short life-spans because their manufacturers come & go &/or do shitty things like taking control over your media player, implementing intrusive & que

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