Amazon Firestick 4K or try something else?
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When we visit Amazon’s website, we view products and specifications and images, yet the customer questions are as important as the customer reviews can be.
After buying and testing the 4K Max, I installed a few apps and setups were customised to get better results. Same again by checking YouTube video tutorials.
I encountered several restarts and had to try getting back to where I was previously. Other customers had mentioned this wi-fi access restart problem and decided to switch back to their 4K Fire Sticks instead.
Despite switching off the Fire Stick, we don’t always see any real improvements and continue getting restarts. So I went back to my 4K Fire Stick, just to get the proper access to the BBC iPlayer content.
Even so, I remembered that there was the Ethernet adapter for the Ethernet cable option. I connected that and got that sorted and I’ve found that this actually reduced the 109 Mb speed down to about 80 Mb instead. Even so, that still worked OK.
I didn’t like messing about with dozens of customisation options every now and then. I had created a list of these menu options based on my 4K Fire Stick and its setups and the YouTube video app’s access to Fire Stick tutorials.
So imagine how beginners would be struggling with the strange ways of the Fire Stick dealing with thousands of apps and their Permissions and allowing storage access and downloading apps as well.
amazon–co-uk
youtube–comDespite a faster processor, the Fire Stick 4K Max wasn’t exactly as impressive as it could have been, so I’ve still got to check if the Ethernet access stops several restarts or not!
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April 9th, 2025 update:
Another Amazon Firestick update helps us to add more live content to the LIVE TV section for the Home Page. Previous updates may have reset settings, so the settings needed to be checked to confirm the privacy settings were set to switch to the off option. The Home Page content should get switched off, too. Otherwise, it shows adverts and audio interruptions. Check Consumer Electronics, as that section displays lots of updates.
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I always have my Fire TV Cube connected to Ethernet.
Like you say, it’s not exactly Lightening speed, mine downloads at approx 80 mbps, from my 250mb Broadband.
But, it streams steady and constant, which the Wi-fi connection doesn’t always seem to manage.The settings for the Fire TV Cube are certainly extensive, I could get lost with changing things, then wonder if I can tell any difference with the Vision and Sounds.
Hope you are well..
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I use Ethernet because it’s also more reliable for software updates that may last up to 30 minutes for some devices. Hopefully, faster, if you can afford the fast Internet speeds for such downloads. I learned that Virgin Media has the slowest speed, as the 125 Mb service, so I couldn’t downgrade and get a better deal anyway. The settings vary with device, and sometimes different names are used to add to the confusion. The Hisense TV and the LG TVs have different TV settings, but I still search for other devices for theirs, such as my DVD Recorder and its settings. Seeing differences isn’t easy for fast-moving scenes, as the processor has to adjust frame-by-frame to fix as much as it can, rather than how I hope to see based on ordinary TVs.
As for my health, I’m awake one minute and almost asleep soon afterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
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I was feeling pretty lost after hearing about a friend’s diagnosis in Atlanta. A search for clinical updates led me to a page about Lung Metastasis Treatment that really helped settle my nerves. The blog does a great job of explaining how secondary tumors are managed. In the USA, it’s easy to feel like just a number in the system, so finding a platform that offers such clear, patient-focused information feels good.
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Firestick updates are driving customers crazy yet again.
YouTube offers recent video suggestions for replacements such as Buzz TV and ONN and Google TV. Some are basic setups and others are complicated to allow us to customise and control our new devices. Buzz TV at over £100 looked impressive but the price didn’t impress me. I usually buy 2 of the same devices to make sure I’ve got a working remote control and device if things don’t work correctly. I’m not going to spend over £200 for 2 of these.
Consumer Electrics, Firestick Alternatives and setups and comparisons.
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I got a new Internet streaming device from eBay for £19. It wouldn’t let me use the remote control until I connected a separate power plug to activate the remote control keys. I used the Amazon Fire TV Stick power plug to get started. I used a separate USB cable to connect an external USB Kingston 32GB drive for downloads. The Google Play Store helped find a few dozen apps for web browsers, streaming TV channels, films and a few file managers. There are a few video players. Setting up the device meant a few extra hours of preferred HDMI quality settings and customising displays. The H96Max androidtv can be checked for its specifications. Use a computer to view YouTube video setup tutorials and positive and negative feedback comments. I discovered the H96Max didn’t view YouTube if we clicked the YouTube key on the remote.
http://www.ebay.co.uk and http://www.youtube.com and http://www.google.com
Don’t lose the manual or the packaging! Check for USB cable accessories for Android devices, such as Amazon Fire TV devices. Use the file managers to create new folders for images and for MP4 downloads.
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H96Max updates:
The use of a power plug for the USB cable meant extra expense. Same again when the remote control didn’t work later on. I used the USB mouse I had bought for my computer. It has the scroll button and left and right buttons. It helped. Eventually I got back to the HOME screen and clicked the top right Settings image. I clicked for Bluetooth devices then the remote and repeated the remote keys left and right held for a few seconds. After repeating this, the remote started working again.
The Play Store has loads of apps to install, but that doesn’t always work, understood? However, if that works later on, then I can at least try with the useful app names I found to see if they install correctly or not.
As for trying to save an Internet website image, well, that’s just pot luck even when the image is displayed on a separate URL. Chrome seemed the only web browser to allow it by displaying a download image at the top of the screen. If not, then no deal.
I got access to the HOME screen where the YouTube app had been displayed after I selected that option. Now the YouTube videos could be seen. I have uploaded some Superhero poem notebooklm videos recently so I could prove the YouTube search worked for my videos.
Overall verdict is 50-50% useful and 50-50% troublesome setups, installations and hard to get image downloads. Some video websites have download access that will work. The File Manager apps then offer different video players if we install these. Playbacks work or they don’t so we must install several video players to test each long or short video.
Search denis martindale for various Poemhunter poem reviews.
Search H96Max 313 model with white remote and white TV stick.
http://www.ebay.co.uk for usb power plugs such as those that work for the Amazon Firestick device.
http://www.ebay.co.uk for usb left and right and scroll computer mouse items with the red light display.
http://www.ebay.co.uk for the Kingston Integral 32GB USB 2 flash drives.Some H96Max review are all smiles while others are clearly rejecting the device because of what it won’t do as well as other android devices with extra accessories such as the power plug for the USB actions to work properly.
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Update, feedback for eBay buyers:
Best picture quality direct to HDMI on TV. I had to use a USB power cable and a USB mouse. Hard to save website images using menus, eg share to various file manager apps. Videos use lots of storage. I couldn’t move videos or images to my USB drive. YouTube uses browser apps, eg m.youtube. I connect the HDMI output to a HDMI to scart adapter, then to a DVD Recorder to record the content in XP quality up to 12 hours. Buy and try other Android apps to save videos and images to separate USBs.
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Further info:
Google Play Store Tools apps included the YouTube Guru Dr Sqiffy’s app.
I chose to use the Sqiffix app to manage the apps and to Force Stop on some apps to reduce usage and free memory. We can delete some cache, too.
I chose to uninstall several of the TV channel apps to reclaim the storage because videos that can get downloaded to the Download folder take up so much storage space. I can’t transfer these video or image files to a connected USB drive such as the Kingston Integral 32GB drive so far… I had to edit some downloads by the backspace delete action to get to the jpg name and then save the jpg that way. Duplicates were deleted later after these tests.
Basically, the device doesn’t have sufficient Menu options and nor do the web browser apps. SHARE seems the only download to whatever File Manager apps we install before trying what we can and then using the SHARE workaround instead of long click on OK to get Save or Save As. These options don’t exist.
I’ve used several Internet devices and this device acts nothing like they do. There is no emulated external_storage folder to switch files to. There is no USB drive listed either.
Limited main drive storage gets used up if we install several apps. We don’t need these all the time, so only install and uninstall for the times that we do. The Squiffix app is extremely useful to access the permissions info. Some apps want microphone audio access and camera access and other apps access. The percentage rating shows these as potential security risks so I uninstalled a few web browser apps I had tested. (It helps to delete their cached data first.)
So all in all, some Internet devices require extreme measures to get any real user-friendly results. YouTube reviews don’t always mention enough about saving videos and images or how to transfer these to separate SD cards or USB drives. So buyers have no idea which devices will help and which require gurus to get useful actions to complete.
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A lot of films are available using Internet devices and apps. I couldn’t understand the audio for a film so I checked the film title on google and then on this UK website:
https://www.filmaffinity.com/uk/main.html
Many films are listed here:
http://www.imdb.com and each has a title number, too.
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