My Fire 4K TV Stick (1st generation) took almost 15 seconds to boot and a couple more to load the home screen. Immediately, a large-scale banner opens for some Amazon original, which I had already ignored a dozen times. Half the rows on that screen were not shows I had seen. Instead, there were digital products that Amazon wanted me to purchase, subscribe to, or rent in addition to what I had already paid for.
I reached my breaking point a few months ago when I was watching the new Jack Ryan movie and the ads kept appearing every ten minutes. Instead of letting unwanted content take up space on my TV screen, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I turned my spare Raspberry Pi 4 on a dedicated Jellyfin server. I connected an Apple TV 4K to my LG TV, installed the Infuse app, and pointed it to the Jellyfin shared server. I haven’t touched the Fire TV Stick 4K since.
The Fire TV Stick’s home screen was busy working against me
Ads disguised as recommendations, not discoveries
While Fire OS calls it a content recommendation, to me it’s just an advertisement. Amazon loves promoting sponsored content in custom rows. With the latest updates, those recommendations continue to find new places to appear. Lately, an Amazon Original program promotion takes up the entire screen without showing the close button. None of this seemed like an isolated incident and I couldn’t ignore it. In fact, everything is built into Fire OS.
Prime Video now serves ads by default, even with an active Prime subscription. Amazon is now asking me to pay $5 (was $3) for the new Prime Video Ultra to remove ads. Little by little, Fire OS has become the tip of the iceberg, not the entire problem.
With each firmware update, my first generation Fire TV Stick 4K feels slower even with a handful of apps installed. The Fire TV Stick now takes about 15 seconds to boot up instead of 12 seconds when new. In the end, the downside of running a modified Android fork on hardware has become apparent over the years.
Loading Jellyfin on a Pi and syncing libraries took an afternoon
Jellyfin client apps found server before syncing libraries
With a spare Raspberry Pi 4 (8GB) available, I didn’t have to buy anything new. I flashed the Pi OS Lite on a microSD card and installed the Jellyfin server directly. Next, I mounted the external drives and pointed the Jellyfin server to the respective folder containing my library. The first scan took hours to retrieve and sync the metadata.
On my Apple TV 4K, I installed the Infuse app, added Jellyfin running on the Pi as a media server, and logged in with my server account credentials. Infuse did the rest of the setup to sync all the libraries’ metadata. Each video file uploaded through Straight play with no transcoding involved. even while 4K remux streaming, The Pi’s CPU couldn’t handle heavy workloads.
The Fire TV Stick’s out-of-the-box experience isn’t actually any more convenient. Just move the friction. I still have to log into each individual streaming app before I can watch anything.
My Jellyfin server shows content I own instead of renting it from Amazon
Just media library without ads or promotional content.
Jellyfin handles the library organization behind the scenes, and Infuse displays all of that on your home screen. Together, you agree to show me content that is mine. There’s no queue of sponsored content, no trailers that automatically play on the screen, and no harping on shows I’m not interested in watching. Most importantly, there is no banner prompting me to rent content or subscribe to other streaming services.
Hosting my own media library also makes browsing faster since there’s no clutter to scroll through. The smaller features, such as Skip introductionThey work reliably and I can resume a paused movie or show an episode in a second instead of waiting for it to catch up.
For the first week, I wondered why I had endured a cluttered, promotion-ridden interface on the Fire TV Stick for so long. In the end, streamlining my streaming media library is the upgrade I didn’t know I needed.
All things considered, the Fire TV Stick still has the advantage
Single command to access a subscription line
The real advantage of the Fire TV Stick is not technical. It’s the coverage. All major streaming subscription apps run natively on it. Those apps include Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Paramount+, Max, Apple TV+, and Peacock. Once configured, all of these services can be accessed with a single remote control. Widevine L1 DRM support is built into each of those apps. That’s what makes the package possible and it can’t be replicated on a Raspberry Pi.
If your favorite shows and movies are located within those subscription apps rather than a personal library, it’s only worth having a Fire TV Stick for that set of services. In fact, not even Infuse can close that gap. My current setup handles Direct Play beautifully for anything in my Jellyfin library, including 4K remuxes. But that’s a win for the personal library, not a subscription app. The Stick still brings together all the major paid streaming services on a single screen better than anything I’ve ever created.
I can’t plug the Fire TV Stick back in
What’s changed goes beyond the difference in hardware specs between the Pi 4 and the Fire TV Stick. It’s about who has control of the screen. I don’t expect a Jellyfin update to quietly include new ad space anytime soon. It does not place any sponsored content on the home screen of my Jellyfin server. All I see is the content I own, which is organized the way I set it up.
This isn’t an attempt to replace every streaming subscription with a Pi. but i have tired of constant sponsored content being pushed and taking over the home screen. That’s why I want to check what’s really mine and run a server from my home hardware. I stopped settling for the convenience of the Fire TV Stick to access major streaming services in one place. I’m happy to pay $75 for a Raspberry Pi 4 and free software instead of buying a $60 streaming device loaded with ads that I can’t turn off.
- iOS compatible
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Yeah
- Android compatible
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Yeah
- Desktop Compatible
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Yeah
