Next Gen Amazon Fire TV about to hit market?
- Thread starter Flint
- Start date
yromj
Well-Known Member
Is that a big deal to you guys? The screen will upconvert the image to 4K (and they do a really good job, especially compared to when things were upconverted to HD). I'm not sure about the HDR though.
John
CMonster
Well-Known Member
Kind of. People on AVS are complaining about the AppleTV outputting the same format (4K HDR) regardless of the source content (for example, how will it handle Dolby Vision from Vudu) with no option to select native. With my setup that actually sounds good for things like YouTube. Right now my video cuts out for at least five seconds when I select a video and an ad starts. Then it's at least another five seconds of darkness and audio when the video actually starts. Same thing with the Fire TV when a show starts and they display their little 'Amazon Original' logo - I have to pause when the show starts and wait for the video to display.
Yeah... we discussed this back with the first HDTVs hit the market. I argued that I'd prefer my TV do the conversion to native screen resolution as its processor would be tuned specifically for that screen. I still feel that way today - even more so now because the DSP scaling hardware is so advanced and affordable that it is probably doing some conversion to the native resolution even when a full 4K signal is being fed to the TV. As such, I would rather non-4K content arrive at the input in its best native format so the TV can do the work making it fit on the screen.
They also announced the Echo Spot which looks like a strange little clock or ambient light because it has a round face with a circular screen which can show a clock, weather, and other info. I like that idea quite a bit. I am not ready to replace my Philips natural sunlight alarm clock with something like this, but I like the concept. If they created an AI engine for it which recognizes the time of day and silence in the room and automatically adjusts the speaker volume (and display brightness) to the appropriate level for the situation, I would love it. During the day I would want it to be louder as I am likely to be moving around the room while in the morning when I wake up I'd want it quieter and less shockingly loud. I currently have an Echo Dot in my bedroom and almost never use it when I am exhausted at night or when I get up because the volume is too loud for those time because during the day I play music more loudly through it.
Well, hell!
As I have discussed elsewhere, I upgraded to the newest Fire TV for my new midrange Samsung 4K TV in my family room and about four days ago everything was working great. Then, on Monday when I attempted to load the Netflix App it wouldn't load. When I pressed the Netflix Icon the screen would go to the gradiated dark grey screen which typically appears for a few seconds while the app loads and then the Netflix logo appears, but the Netflix logo never appears and after about 20 seconds I am back at the Amazon home screen. I tried resetting the Fire TV, testing the network quality, clearing the Netflix App cache, force closing the App, and even uninstalling the Netflix app, resetting the Fire TV, and reinstalling the Netflix app - none of those things made a difference.
So, I went on my PC to my Netflix account and checked to make sure there weren't any account issues, and I could find none. I then tested Netflix on my phone, PC, and even my two older Fire TV devices, and it works everywhere else.
Today, out of sheer frustration I used the Amazon "call me for support" feature to speak to a technical support person who took over control of my Fire TV via screen sharing / remote control and try everything I tried and got the same results. She escalated the issue to the software developers and I hope to hear back tomorrow.
This sucks because I am tired and have free time to watch TV and I've drained Hulu of most of the shows I care about watching and Amazon Prime TV isn't as interesting. There are shows on Netflix I have been wanting to watch, but I cannot. And, of course, the thing I want most is the thing I cannot currently have.
As I have discussed elsewhere, I upgraded to the newest Fire TV for my new midrange Samsung 4K TV in my family room and about four days ago everything was working great. Then, on Monday when I attempted to load the Netflix App it wouldn't load. When I pressed the Netflix Icon the screen would go to the gradiated dark grey screen which typically appears for a few seconds while the app loads and then the Netflix logo appears, but the Netflix logo never appears and after about 20 seconds I am back at the Amazon home screen. I tried resetting the Fire TV, testing the network quality, clearing the Netflix App cache, force closing the App, and even uninstalling the Netflix app, resetting the Fire TV, and reinstalling the Netflix app - none of those things made a difference.
So, I went on my PC to my Netflix account and checked to make sure there weren't any account issues, and I could find none. I then tested Netflix on my phone, PC, and even my two older Fire TV devices, and it works everywhere else.
Today, out of sheer frustration I used the Amazon "call me for support" feature to speak to a technical support person who took over control of my Fire TV via screen sharing / remote control and try everything I tried and got the same results. She escalated the issue to the software developers and I hope to hear back tomorrow.
This sucks because I am tired and have free time to watch TV and I've drained Hulu of most of the shows I care about watching and Amazon Prime TV isn't as interesting. There are shows on Netflix I have been wanting to watch, but I cannot. And, of course, the thing I want most is the thing I cannot currently have.
I will say this... the process of getting support and their ability to instantly connect to my Fire TV was very impressive. I clicked the "contact us" button in the help section of the Fire TV interface and they called me and I was talking to someone in less than a minute. Then, once I provided my Amazon account into and which Fire TV was having issues and the support agent was immediately able to take over my unit and all I had to do was approve access with one click. It was amazingly simple.
