[Dudeman]

Trust me, American Energy prices, depending on where you live, are not cheap either.  3 years ago, before the pandemic, I used to pay about $90 a month for my electrical and gas bil for a 2 bedroom apartment, today, my power use is lower than 3 years ago, yet, I'm currently paying in excess of $250.  So it's not cheap.

Anyway, yesterday, I got my USB 3.0 to Gbit LAN adapter, I purchased from Amazon.  It's a TP Link UE306 model.  I needed to also get a small USB A to MicroUSB adapter, because the Fire Cube doesn't have a full USB Type A port, but would you beleive it, it does work, and my test now show 250Mbit down and about the same up when I use the speed test add-on in KODI.

I also watched John Wick 2 in it's entirety, streaming it from my QNAP via this new adapter.  There were only 2 instances of buffering, very short (2 seconds or so), and interestingly enough they were not in a high bit rate place, just random,  I backed the movie up 30 seconds to see if it will happen again in the same spot, and it didn't.   So I can only conclude there was something else, some other hiccup but not data rate related.

So I think for those that want to play full on, movies, the USB 3.0 to Gbit adapter might be a solution.  I for one don't play this sort of stuff, I'm quite happy with my lower bitrate rips, so for me it's never been an issue, but for those that do want to use something like a Fire Cube but were concerned about the LAN, this might work.

[noggin]

I'll do some testing later as well, but I really think it's intentional to make streaming of local media more difficult.

The price difference for 100mbs Vs 1Gb for manufacturers it's literally pennies.

The other problem is background services, if we are staturating 100mbs with media, then the device decides to download an update or refresh some cached app data, it's not going to be a good time.

Some SoCs have on-board 100Mbs support and require off-board additional components for Gigabit.  First rule I learned when I worked in designing electronics is that keeping PCB size to the smallest possible is as important, if not more important than keeping the BOM cost down. If you can do both - and reduce costs all round whilst still hitting your target market - it's a win.

I very much doubt Amazon think that much about people running Kodi to play UHD BD rips from servers when they are designing their FireTV devices - they are focussed on the best performance that they can achieve for their target media sources (streaming) at the lowest price point that delivers reasonable performance.  There is literally no reason for them to add Gigabit to their designs at the moment.  Should Sony open up their high bitrate service to non-Sony devices, or someone else offer a >60-70Mbs high quality streaming service, then there will be.

[TheBuz]

I'll do some testing later as well, but I really think it's intentional to make streaming of local media more difficult.

The price difference for 100mbs Vs 1Gb for manufacturers it's literally pennies.

The other problem is background services, if we are staturating 100mbs with media, then the device decides to download an update or refresh some cached app data, it's not going to be a good time.

I very much doubt Amazon think that much about people running Kodi to play UHD BD rips from servers when they are designing their FireTV devices - they are focussed on the best performance that they can achieve for their target media sources (streaming) at the lowest price point that delivers reasonable performance.  There is literally no reason for them to add Gigabit to their designs at the moment.  Should Sony open up their high bitrate service to non-Sony devices, or someone else offer a >60-70Mbs high quality streaming service, then there will be.

Amazon shouldn't really be dictating how I should use my device. I bought it, it doesn't belong to them anymore.

And if that really was the case, then why bother with WiFi6? WiFi 4 (11n) is plenty fast enough.

[jjd-uk]

Amazon shouldn't really be dictating how I should use my device. I bought it, it doesn't belong to them anymore.

That is the trade off for getting cheap hardware since Amazon does it with the expectation they'll reap the reward from the paid for services. However the hardware division of Amazon is currently in major trouble as they aren't making the money they thought they would from providing services to people buying their hardware, so expect more blocking of 3rd party launchers and anything else to prevent people consuming their own media.

[Hitcher]

Q: Is 100Mbit Ethernet good enough?

A: Not if you're playing full BluRay discs or REMUX's.

A couple of months ago I started getting problems playing REMUX's and after a lot of checking I found my NAS was reporting its connection speed was only 100 Mbps. I eventually tracked it down to an ethernet port on my Gigabit Switch and after changing to a different port my NAS reported 1000 Mbps connection speed again and I no longer had any playback problems.

[jbinkley60]

Amazon shouldn't really be dictating how I should use my device. I bought it, it doesn't belong to them anymore.

And if that really was the case, then why bother with WiFi6? WiFi 4 (11n) is plenty fast enough.

They aren't dictating but they are only designing for certain use cases.  I doubt their design goal is to solve all streaming needs for their users vs. something which will help their consumers consume their services. 


Jeff

[TheBuz]

Amazon shouldn't really be dictating how I should use my device. I bought it, it doesn't belong to them anymore.

And if that really was the case, then why bother with WiFi6? WiFi 4 (11n) is plenty fast enough.

They aren't dictating but they are only designing for certain use cases.  I doubt their design goal is to solve all streaming needs for their users vs. something which will help their consumers consume their services. 


Jeff

I Disagree, I think they are purposely putting effort into stopping people using the full potential of the hardware. More effort is made to restrict the user rather than leaving things open.

They are actively spending money and dev time to make the product worse.

[jbinkley60]

I Disagree, I think they are purposely putting effort into stopping people using the full potential of the hardware. More effort is made to restrict the user rather than leaving things open.

They are actively spending money and dev time to make the product worse.

As far as I know,  the Amazon platform is proprietary and not considered open.  I don't believe they have claimed otherwise but I am not really that close to it. Folks may consider the Android OS open but I've never really gone that far in my thinking vs. Linux. I personally wouldn't think of Amazon devices in the open category of devices.  I guess that is part of the reason I chose not to buy their hardware. 


Jeff

[Dudeman]

I doubt that Amazon is actively trying to block anyone from using their devices.  As @jbinkley60 said, the Fire OS is not an open OS, it may be based on Android, but it's not open.  Neither is the Android OS that's on most phones.  It's google's version of the OS.  Everything dealing with Google services is Google proprietary.  this is the reason why the majority of (cheap) Android devices coming out of China don't have Google services, because they don't want to pay Google royalties.

No, Amazon devices were designed to provide a ways of accessing Amazon service, and are sold at near cost with the expectations that the money will come from subscriptions.  And I don't think you'll see many device capable of streaming full Blurays or remuxes any time soon, as that type of service would imply the user has Gigabit internet access, and in the US, Gigabit Internet adoption has been slow. 

https://www.nexttv.com/news/gigabit-spee...rnet-homes

Until Gigabit internet adaption is a lot larger, streaming services will not increase their bandwidth just to serve a small minority of "videophiles"

[izprtxqkft]

As @jbinkley60 said, the Fire OS is not an open OS, it may be based on Android, but it's not open.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/...=200203720

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/...=201626480

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/...=201452680

[jbinkley60]

As @jbinkley60 said, the Fire OS is not an open OS, it may be based on Android, but it's not open.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/...=200203720

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/...=201626480

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/...=201452680

I stand corrected with regards to the base OS. I should have qualified my comment with regards to running on their hardware and them supporting the third party apps. Folks are on their own here. Maybe Amazon can develop a Linux like community in the future but I have doubts.


Jeff

[izprtxqkft]

its certainly not as easy as hacking an htc evo but its still not impossible to obtain root access or write custom roms
its just very involved, mostly requiring hardware hacks, theyve done a good job at securing their devices - due to dirty pirates, same thing kodi is having to deal with

apple is worse about locked down devices but none of their users complain much

[TheBuz]

apple is worse about locked down devices but none of their users complain much

Yeah, but Apple customers know and accept that sometimes going as far as calling it a feature.

And the tech heads who want to do real things with their own hardware avoid apple if they can.

Like me, I got my first iPhone this week, it was free it's just an iPhone 6 because I want to use some airtags for travel, thats it. I can't believe it's 2023 and I still can't put the icons where I want them.

[izprtxqkft]

i do actually consider a secure platform that prevents users from monkeying with settings and installing malware to be a feature.

on linux i used to set up root as ro with an overlayfs for userdata - very similar to the way android does it

on windows i used deepfreeze later on, custom solutions prior - https://www.faronics.com/products/deep-freeze

i even find use in chromeos for a user that just needs a browser

i have never owned an apple product simply because my ocd requires a level of control i never had on them

honestly an admins worst nightmare are the users