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Operating Systems

Amazon Launches Vegas OS, Its Android Replacement For Fire TV With No Sideloading (9to5google.com) 61

Posted by BeauHD from the closed-gardens dept.
Amazon is replacing Android on new Fire TV hardware with its own Vega OS, debuting on the Fire TV Stick 4K Select. While major streaming apps are supported, sideloading is gone "because, well, this isn't Android anymore," notes 9to5Google. The company says "only apps from the Amazon Appstore are available for download." From the report: The company hasn't fully detailed all of the ins and outs of Vega, but Amazon hints that this is a move in the interest of performance. In a post, Amazon touches on Vega being "remarkably fast" despite the low-end hardware of its new Fire TV Stick 4K Select: "Our newest Fire TV Stick, the 4K Select, helps you maximize every pixel of your 4K TVs at an incredible value. It delivers vibrant 4K picture quality with HDR10+ support and apps that launch remarkably fast. The performance comes from our new operating system, Vega, which is responsive and highly efficient. Everything you need is right in the box -- it works with your favorite streaming services, and will soon support Xbox Gaming, Luna, and Alexa+."

As pointed out by AFTVNews, the Fire TV 4K Select offers a mere 1GB of RAM, which is half as much as prior generations. So, in a way, that does speak to how lightweight this new platform is. But the bigger question is around apps. Amazon says that "your favorite streaming services" still work with Vega, and that Xbox, Luna, and Alexa+ will be coming "soon" (though they're already supported on existing Android-based Fire TV devices).

Amazon Launches Vegas OS, Its Android Replacement For Fire TV With No Sideloading More | Reply

Amazon Launches Vegas OS, Its Android Replacement For Fire TV With No Sideloading

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  • Pixel values matter (Score:3)

    by thesjaakspoiler ( 4782965 ) on Tuesday September 30, 2025 @07:03PM (#65694268)

    Each and every one of them on my 4K screen have incredible value!
    They can be red, blue, green, white or anything in between and can even decide not to emit any color at all!
    Amazing values!

  • Meh, who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ukoda ( 537183 ) on Tuesday September 30, 2025 @07:12PM (#65694304) Homepage
    The Android Fire TV had become so enshitified it was useless and all that hardware has been retired here. So they are offering a pre-enshitified product. Based on Amazon's track record with Fire TV anyone who buys it deserves what they will receive.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Entrope ( 68843 )

      Amazon cares, apparently. But without sideloading, and with apologies to the typo in the headline here... what happens on Vega, stays in Vega.

    • Don't know what you're on about, but my FireTV stick 4K is the best, cheap (non aliexpress), media stick I own. Through sideloading it has extra apps that make it perfect.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ukoda ( 537183 )
        You must have got lucky and not had the enshitification updates yet. I brought one, it was great, start the sideloaded app, it ran fast and reliably. Turn off the TV and when you turned if back on the app was still running. Magic, I brought 4 more, they worked great too.

        Then came the first enshitification update. Now when you turn of the TV it has returned to the Amazon home screen and you had to navigate to the app and relaunch it everytime.

        Then came the second enshitification update. Now when y
      • Its still a slow piece of shit full of ads and telemetry. I replaced mine with an Nvidia Shield and it is much more responsive and customizable.

    • We mainly use our Amazon stick to load up Netflix and occasionally Kodi. If they're going to lock out Kodi, then I'll need to find another way to do that bit. Ideally I'd get Netflix on that other thing too, then I don't really need to look at Amazon for anything. Netflix aren't completely against running on open source projects, although it'll take a lot of convincing it's worth their time to do it.

      Amazon Prime video is "for free" - and it shows. I just watched Reacher (which is average at best, but he doe

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ukoda ( 537183 )
        For many people I think the solution will be to use the Vegas based player or a Chrome Cast for 'approved' software such as Netflix and a second RPi based LibreELEC player for 'unapproved' stuff. The big tech companies are getting really aggressive these days about stopping you from running anything on their hardware that does not earn them money directly.

        I wonder how long until they stop developers offering any free apps that don't include ads they serve without a bogus fee such as a 'security' fee. G

  • Tax 'em (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eclectro ( 227083 ) on Tuesday September 30, 2025 @07:14PM (#65694310)

    For the new piles of ewaste they're generating. It's kind of funny how Google gets hauled into court for all their anti-trust hijinks but yet to fail to see Amazon on the radar!

  • Who is going to buy these products?

    Some people will buy anything, even a TV that constantly shows ads, so I have no doubt that someone will. But I'd think most people, given the choice of Apple, Roku, real Android, or weak Amazon "Vegas" Android, are not going to want the last option.

    • Re:My only question is ... (Score:5, Informative)

      by viperidaenz ( 2515578 ) on Tuesday September 30, 2025 @07:23PM (#65694326)

      The majority of people don't care what operating system an appliance runs, just that it does what it says on the box.
      It's a $40 device. If it lasts a few years, most people will just buy a new one if something goes wrong with it.
      There's people out there who spend more on an HDMI cable than the cost of this HDMI device.

      • Even good audiophool speaker cables cost more than this -- but you can't really put a price on silver-plated cryogenically treated 101% pure copper wires that have been braided by the hands of virgins under a blue moon whist facing directly East into a 5 knot wind at 37.5 percent humidity precisely located over a suitable warp in the magnetic field of the earth.

        And yes, you can definitely hear the difference, especially when using 128kbps MP3 files!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bumbul ( 7920730 )

          but you can't really put a price on silver-plated cryogenically treated 101% pure copper wires that have been braided by the hands of virgins under a blue moon whist facing directly East into a 5 knot wind at 37.5 percent humidity precisely located over a suitable warp in the magnetic field of the earth.

          No match for the Toslink cable I bought, which has gold-plated connectors!

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by rta ( 559125 )

            No match for the Toslink cable I bought, which has gold-plated connectors!

            $30 for the 5 foot ones at amazon https://www.amazon.com/Monster... [amazon.com]

            Monster has carefully crafted this optical digital audio cable with corrosion-resistant gold-plated connectors to guarantee optimal signal transfer and higher fidelity audio for a significantly improved immersive surround sound experience.

            i still remember seeing these like 20 years ago at Fry's and just not believing that i was seeing it. and then my confidence started to waver as i wondered if they knew something i didn't... because i mean... they're the ones being paid 4x for a cable. (back then)

            marketing messaging is a powerful force...

            • marketing messaging is a powerful force...

              It says you will be manipulated and taken advantage of. When you know ohms law you buy most of your cables at the hardware/supply store and put your own ends on them. Yeah, put the covers on the wire first.

              I don't think I have ever used a Monster cable, maybe to tie something down if it was free and nearby.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by tepples ( 727027 )

                I own only one Monster cable. And that's because Monster's component cable for Wii was less expensive than Nintendo's.

          • Don't know if you're joking or not, but I do in fact own 2 Toslink cables that have the tips plated in gold.

            I asked the salesperson at the time I was buying it if they had any other cables available as gold wasn't going to materially affect light.

            Alas, there were no other options :/

          • Listen, gold plated connectors are almost as corrosion resistant as plastic.

      • I just bought 2 firesticks to use with Netflix and jellyfin. Cost me $25 CDN each. This has me thinking I should buy a third. I sure hope jellyfin works on these ones.
    • vagas isnt android its Linux. basically chrome os before it was any good.
  • What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas? No sideloading? Who's your daddy?

  • You can no longer easily install unsupported 3rd party applications on the new Fire sticks, but the even better news is that they also decreased the memory on them, insuring that they'll continue to be a somewhat useless device even someone jailbreaks it later? Fantastic, where can I sign up?

    I love streaming devices where advertising takes up half of the home screen and it reports my viewing habits to a trillion dollar mega-corporation!

  • Getting away from Android Lag (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sonicmerlin ( 1505111 ) on Tuesday September 30, 2025 @08:38PM (#65694440)

    If you’ve ever used android on a lower speed chip, you’d know it’s still as laggy as the day it was first announced to have touch capabilities, essentially bolted on a blackberry clone to mimic iPhone OS’s capabilities. It takes a lot of effort for OEMs to hide the lag even on high end chips and you can still see it on frequently used phones inside stores.

    Anything that gets away from such an old out of date architecture is ideal IMO. I remember windows phone 8 could scroll smooth as butter even on heavy websites despite running on single core in order ARM CPUs. But that died out and now we’re left with android and iOS, which has grown more bloated with each update.

    • Itâ(TM)s funny. Windows Phone 8 was about to pull me out of the iphone-and probably even apple-ecosystem. i was just fixing to pull the trigger when they cancelled the project. Not that a conversion of 1 matters, but I bet I was not alone.

      iâ(TM)m not fully understanding the enshittification of our time. Itâ(TM)s more than just money or twisted entertainment for fat cats. A mutual aid organization (friends, not business) I am associated with recently changed their perfectly simple and function

      • It's Satanism.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rta ( 559125 )

        And ostensibly everyone is motivated by goodwill. And yet the urge to change for the worse is irresistibleâ¦

        it's just an urge to change period. Novelty is stimulating for most and we're pretty heavily trained that old is worn out and that newer is better.

        Couple that with the fact that many/most people aren't power users of most things ... and there you go.

        BTW, can you give me a sense of what this mutual aid organization does / how ? i.e. what services it provides to members ? (i understand that you're probably concerned with privacy but i've been wondering about some things of that sort something like a "

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Even the lowest end Kindle hardware now will run Android reasonably smoothly on 3GB of RAM. Not great, but usable for basic stuff. You can root and replace the OS with Lineage which makes them much better and a bit faster too (no need to load ads).

      They are actually okay for cheap tablets that are a known quantity, as long as you are willing and able to rip out Amazon's crapware. Have a look on YouTube to see it running decently enough. Lots of cheap accessories.

  • Sideloading apps is highly restricted. While a Developer Mode exists and allows sideloading through a command-line interface via a USB connection to a computer. in short its all web apps on top of linux. so it will need to be written for the new fire stick to work.
  • They're going to start requiring signatures to install apps the last I heard. I guess in theory you could get a signature for the app from Google and then sideload it but I think it's safe to say if they're starting along that path they're going to lock the platform down.

    We traded and he trusts law enforcement and a stable capitalist economy for moral panics. I guess some people think it was worth it.

    • They're going to start requiring signatures to install apps the last I heard.

      Thankfully, Kodi is at least still in the official Play store. Though, if it ever really came down to it, even a Raspberry Pi doesn't do a half bad job running Kodi.

      These new Amazon sticks though? Useless garbage.

  • You can just get a Chromecast w/ Google TV which functions leaps and bounds better than Fire TV. I don't know why anyone ever bought a Fire TV instead of a Chromecast. It never made any sense.

    • I have Rogers tv and while the chromecast has "casting" in the app from my phone, it is horribly laggy and doesn't even support resume play. If I'm in the middle of a baseball game it takes me 5 minutes of watching the tracking bar go slowly across the screen. Where's the firestick runs the Rogers app natively which is still horrible but much better. Also the firesticks cost me $25 CDN, which is about how much value I give them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

        That's a problem with Rogers TV app not the Chromecast.

        • Fair enough, but unfortunately that doesn't change the situation.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

            True. But it is a reason to ditch Rogers altogether. I'm almost positive there are better alternatives to get what you want. And there is no guarantee that Rogers will continue to support Fire TV, since they are (stupidly) focusing on their own hardware.

            • That's why I only pay 25 for HD and 35 for 4k. They are so cheap I can ignore the downsides. I wouldn't pay full price for them. Rogers gave me a pretty good deal to bundle everything. They cut imy cellphone bill almost in half with 5x more data. Also there are only two towers in the area and the Rogers one works better.

  • Surprised there's no comments about the effect on loaded sticks, or is that just something here in the UK?

    (There's a roaring underground trade in Amazon Fire sticks which have been modified to allow dodgy streaming feeds - a sort of non-techie version of what nerds would do by using something like VLC).

    • Was wondering the same thing. I think this is the real reason for the switch. Amazon was getting too much flak for their sticks. Doubt these new ones will run Kodi

    • They are about to find out it was the main reason people bought their hardware. It otherwise isn't better than Apple TV, Roku or Chromecast w/ Google TV - worse, actually. It can be cheaper than all but the cheapest Roku. They are probably selling them at a loss and continuing to lose when people aren't using them with Amazon services.

  • anyone who buys these streaming services are suckers... and this one is more suckers than usual

  • I thought the only reason anyone bought Firesticks was to sideload "dodgy box" apps that stream content from premium services. If they shut the sticks down then I can see sales dwindling away to nothing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      I thought the only reason anyone bought Firesticks was to sideload "dodgy box" apps that stream content from premium services. If they shut the sticks down then I can see sales dwindling away to nothing.

      Not to mention that as big as Amazon is, preventing sideloading has very real antitrust implications.

      Hello, Justice Department?

      This decision might just be a one-two punch for Amazon.

      • Hell-o. This is the US Justice Department.

        For all inquiries related to the Epstein files, your calling location has been recorded and ICE agents will arrive promptly.

        For Inquiries about the latest motorcoach prices, please remember how you failed last time Mr. Olivier.

        For inquiries about the latest edicts to be enforced please go to truth.#####ES##S.

        For anti-trust enforcement inquiries, please try the EU. They care about this stuff far more than the US ever will.

        Go-od B-ye. /s
  • Walmart has the ONN devices the pro is like $50 and they have a cheap one for like $20, I am sure prices vary but it is a hackable, side loadable Android TV device that has been rock solid for me for the last year. Replaced my FireTV 3rd gen box with it and haven't looked back.

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