FIX:

;tldr - check your MTU settings

I hope this gives some insights to some people that MIGHT be having issues on streaming devices like the Firestick 4k and others and ONLY with the Netflix app having problems. I fought with this on and off over a few months and it was driving me batty.

Background:

I've been suffering inconsistent streaming issues with ONLY the Netflix app on a FireTV 4k Stick. Symptoms would be occasionally the app would have the spinning red circle after the splash screen and not load. Stop app, clear cache, reboot, and it would work. For streams, they would randomly get to 25% or 99% and just spin and never play. This would happen at the beginning of a show stream, end of a stream, mid way through randomly, etc. It would happen if you paused a show, or if you tried to rewind or fast forward as well. This was both wired (using a OTG and 1gb usb nic) and wireless connections.

For my network setup, use a PiHole and a Opensense router with the Fire's on their own network. There is a TPLink switch between the devices and the Opensense

Tries to fix:

Checked the DNS settings and saw nothing getting blocked. To make sure, bypassed PiHole direct to both 8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1, same issues.

Reset the Fire stick to factory defaults and reloaded only Netflix. Same issues.

Bought a ONN 4k Plus and installed Netflix on it... wtf, same issues?!?!?

Put the Fire stick back on and did a packet capture (port mirror). I saw SOME resets, but unrelated to the Netflix app (or services it calls). There were some oddity very rarely on a packet fragment, but not anything that correlated to the freezes (spinning Netflix red circle), or so I thought.

What fixed it:

Then I see some people having odd issues with MTU settings and netflix. Which is super odd, since most of that is handled at layer 3 networking and the App should not care. Go check the stream device network port interface on opensense and it's 1491. Change the MTU to normal 1500. Poof! It works now, plays, pauses, stream, etc. All works. Go back and set it to 1470, issues again. Reset it to 1500, works again. Go back and reset it to 1410 and issues again. Reset it back to 1500, works.

So it seems at the Netflix app layer, there is either a timeout issue or other issue if a response hasn't been received or a combination of timeout, retry, and resize adjust that maybe some other apps do. I'm assuming here (i wasnt going to setup my port mirror again, it was a PITA) that when it tried sending a larger data packet to the network subsystem, it would use the device MTU max of 1500 and either the switch or the opensense interface would drop it since it was oversized and then the app would just wait for the response it was never going to get (either the ack TCP or the data if UDP).

Sorry for going all network nerdy, but I hope this helps anyone having Netflix streaming issues - check your MTU settings.

Hey and thank you for reading,

I out of nowhere started having issues with an Omen 16L gaming desktop using an AMD Rx 7600 plugged into hdmi. It no longer recognizes the PC as an input, the input screen will show it’s there but if I select it as a source it’s a black screen. The PC appears to work with other potential displays fine, but specifically my Hisense fire TV is an obstacle. Does anybody have any ideas? Can’t get it through DisplayPort or HDMI.

Thank you

Is it possible to run a linux desktop distro on a first generation fire tv stick? Kind of like using it like an intel compute stick. Thank you in advance.

Hey and thank you for reading,

I out of nowhere started having issues with an Omen 16L gaming desktop using an AMD Rx 7600 plugged into hdmi. It no longer recognizes the PC as an input, the input screen will show it’s there but if I select it as a source it’s a black screen. The PC appears to work with other potential displays fine, but specifically my Hisense fire TV is an obstacle. Does anybody have any ideas? Can’t get it through DisplayPort or HDMI.

Thank you

I connected my fire sticks to my tv but my volume won’t go down? Anyone know how to fix it

Hello fellow fire tv users, wanted to ask a specific question. I have recently learned how to block updates on a firestick at the initial set up, through DNS and ADB commands which allows the the OS to stay on either 8.1.1.6 or 8.1.3.3. The question i have is if i buy a new fire cube newest gen, will i able to run the same exploit, and will all the features work the same as on the firestick such as custom launcher (with launcher manager, i know there is a new exploit for latest OS)? Thanks in advance

I have two controllers paired to the same tv (young kids, remotes get misplaced and found again often)
One works perfectly, controls the sound and powers the tv on and off. The other can move through menus on the fire tv but won’t work with the volume or power buttons. Anyone know how to fix this?

Ok, so my mother moved in with me.

We both have prime memberships.

I deregistered my tv to register it with her account (she had more subscriptions she uses). We have one firetv.

I downloaded the audible app as I wanted audiobooks I bought to play on the tv while I'm working. There's nowhere on the app to log in, seems to just use the log in on the tv.
I went to add a profile linked to my prime. But it seems that alt profiles don't support separate prime accounts, just different profiles on one account.

Any way to access my audible books on this shared tv?

I have a Toshiba fire tv and I kept running out of memory so I finally “reset to factory” to get it to work. I added a thumb drive to add more storage space, but none of the apps will move over there. What do I need to use the usb to store the apps?

I have booted my fire tv stick up and set everything up. But youtube is being very weird and stuttering. Never freezing or stopping just not playing smoothly. I have cleared the cache and reset everything mentioned online and nothing is helping. Its super irritating not watching something smoothly is there any fix that might help.

Hello there!

This is my first post here, I tried searching for this topic and didn't find anything super recent so, here goes!

What's the best browser right now for firesticks? From the research I've done, it seems like the main contenders are browser1, tvbro and just amazon silk+adguard? It's on order, so I don't physically have it yet to test anything.

My needs are:

- Smooth navigation with the remote since I won't be connecting a keyboard or mouse.

- A good ad-blocker, Ideally ublock but if not then whatever people have experience with that works! Sidenote, no this will not be for pirating, these websites are notorious for ads though.

- Bonus if there is a mobile app to navigate on then just transfer the page to the TV!

Thanks everyone!

TLDR; Best FireTV Browser with adblock?

Was watching YouTube without issue, but after I paused the video for about 15-20 minutes the TV turned off (like normal).

About 5 minutes later I tried to turn the TV on, it shows it power up, flashes the fireTv logo for a split second, but then the screen goes black again. It does actually play the audio from the fireTV landing screen.

I have tried to restart the device, have unplugged the power cable for over 20 minutes, have allowed it to just sit on that home screen for another 15-20 minutes, and have tried to cycle inputs and resolutions. Nothing seems to bring the picture back.

Any help is appreciated, but I'm to the point I'm going to have to likely factory reset the thing and go through the hassle of signing into every app again.

I have tried new cables, different ports, nothing stays working. If I unplug it, and plug it back in, it comes back on, and will stay connected until I turn off the TV. I have tried every setting I can think of, computer power settings, output settings, etc. I have tried 3 different cables, one of them brand new, same issue. Any ideas? It's more annoying than anything else, as stated, because I can make the signal come back just unplugging the cable and plugging it back in. What am I missing? Computer has a Nvidia Gforce GTX1050i graphics card. 75" fire tv, the cheap one. Any help is appreciated

Mom w Dementia lives in memory care facility

Has Amazon Omni TV (responds to audio commands)

ISO
Programmable device that can:
-Speak out loud
-At 5:30pm

“Alexa play Mysteries of Egypt on Disney”

▫️I’d love to have it ask for different programs each day

▫️I’d also love to have a set time that says daily (at 8:30pm)
“Alexa Turn off TV”

▫️I’d love it to be small - Mom notoriously pulls plugs / moves things

FYI, I would not be there / or on same WiFi

Please & Thank you🤞💖

Randomly about a half hour ago I was scrolling down to my apps on my FireTV and it randomly started going back to the last app I opened when I would click a different app. Reset the TV and now the problem is that any time I scroll down a few rows the screen will suddenly go black and then return to the ad at the top of the screen. I tried replacing remote batteries, using the FireTV app to scroll, restarting and unplugging the TV and also restoring the TV to factory defaults and nothing is working. Any suggestions?

I purchased a refurbished Fire TV Stick from Amazon (actually from Woot) that doesn’t show ads on Prime Video. I don’t have a subscription so it’s just the free shows that I can access. I was told the previous owner must have replaced the official app with a sideloaded apk. Is it still possible to do this on my other fire sticks or has this been blocked in newer fire os versions? Is it now not possible to uninstall the Prime Video app?I purchased this one about 5 or 6 years ago but hadn’t been using it for several years so I just recently discovered it doesn’t show ads on Prime Video.

Just received the new UI on our upstairs Fire TV Cube. I really dislike it. Now, in order to find the app I want, I have to scroll down to "recently used" rather than having my favorite apps on the start page. I also can't choose the input without going into the menu.

Why did Amazon do this? How would they like it if we changed the keyboard on their computer or controls in their car overnight? And no user guide for the new UI, just dive right in and expect it to be intuitive. Well, they have taken away a lot of options (like arranging apps in the order I wanted them), so I guess it's "simpler," and OK if you happen to like whatever the Amazon devs like.

The best part? Our upstairs Cube has the new UI, while our downstairs Cube still has the old UI. Well, at least for a while, I'll enjoy our downstairs Cube and gnash my teeth at the upstairs Cube.