
A Problem With Amazon’s Fire TV - hk__2
http://liisten.com/the-secret-problem-with-amazons-fire-tv
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aphexairlines
This article is yet another example of how ISP data caps delay or block
innovation. If caps were common in the 90s and 2000s, streaming media services
that we take for granted today wouldn't have been able to get off the ground.

We have the same problem with LTE networks today. Want to watch a world cup
game on your 720p or 1080p smartphone during your commute to the office? One
match is probably half of your typical monthly LTE data cap.

~~~
jhonovich
"ISP data caps delay or block innovation"

So they should provide totally unlimited data for a fixed price?

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Spittie
There is no such thing as "unlimited data", your speed is your cap.

Anyway, it's understandable that your ISP will want to have a talk with you if
you push/pull 10+ TB every month (in this case, you're probably violating
their "no commercial service on consumer line" rule), but 250GB/month is just
ridiculous.

~~~
Bud
I can see that you're a bit out of date on these issues, so let me inform you:

1) No, your speed is not your cap. Net providers are increasingly implementing
"soft caps" that they don't tell you about when you buy the service. 2) If you
think 250GB/month is ridiculously low as a cap, go try to use 10TB a month
with most providers and let me know what your results are.

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skizm
ASAP sounds awesome. I mean, sure it should probably be an opt-in thing, but
for people with no data caps it is a pretty killer feature. I usually pick a
series and watch an episode or two when I get home from work to unwind before
plugging in to whatever project I'm working on. If I could get 1080p all the
time, I would be so happy. Netflix and Time Warner in general get used heavily
around 6pm where I live, so connections are generally shit.

Change it to opt-in and allow users to select what level of clarity they want
to cache (720p vs 1080p to save on data usage), and set a cap on the data
usage used with ASAP and this is a great feature.

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ploxiln
Torrent the seasons you want of the shows you want, overnight, and you can
have the future today. You'll use significantly less data than the FireTV too.

~~~
lotu
Perhaps I want to support the shows I'm enjoying.

~~~
dublinben
Then mail them a check. It's unlikely that free streaming video kicks back
much of anything, from what we know of the music side.

~~~
jamespo
That is impractical and Prime / Netflix isn't free

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asadotzler
I too experienced this. I have low-bandwidth and data capped Internet access
that I blow through every month (there are no other Internet services in my
area) and though I was getting a generally better stream from the Fire TV than
from my other streaming devices, I was forced to unplug it when I couldn't
find the "stop sucking bandwidth all the time" switch.

I'm sure most people with streaming TV solutions have unlimited plans with
plenty of bandwidth but some of us don't and Amazon's one size fits all
approach that sucks up all available bandwidth even when not in use, and that
blows through reasonable data caps with just a day or two of being plugged in,
is simply too much for this Prime household.

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tstenovec
Hi, asadotzler -- I'm a tech reporter at The Huffington Post in New York
working on a story about this, and I'd love to connect. I'm at
timothy[dot]stenovec[at]huffingtonpost[dot]com. Thanks very much.

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PeterisP
It seems that there's a problem with USA internet providers and their data
caps, not with the device.

Why shouldn't my video device use, say, 10% of my available bandwidth if it
improves user experience ? Americans already pay unreasonably high monopoly
prices for their bandwith, and they aren't even allowed to use it?

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bitJericho
My internet's unlimited. Not all Americans buy from nasty cable companies.

~~~
tcfunk
> Not all Americans buy from nasty cable companies.

Not all Americans live in a place where they have the luxury of choosing their
ISP.

~~~
bitJericho
There's always a choice. It's like if I loved forests but decided to move to
the desert, doesn't make any sense. That said, I won't argue there's some
serious issues with ISPs in the US.

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Scramblejams
Had the exact same problem with my Kindle Fire. All of a sudden I had 30 gigs
a day worth of usage. Completely insane. Saw it as an opportunity to finally
put together the Debian-based router I'd been wanting to do, and darkstat
confirmed that the Kindle was the bandwidth hog. A short traffic shaping
script throttled the Kindle to a more reasonable data rate and the problem was
solved.

I have no idea what the average Fire user could do in this situation. I found
a few complaints across the web of similar problems, and all they could do was
shut the thing off and stop using it. Very frustrating.

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sroerick
This is a great feature.

It's a shame our internet infrastructure isn't up to snuff.

~~~
vosper
That's true, but this also feels like a bug with the Fire - it surely isn't
intended (and doesn't need) to consume 80gb in one day in order to pre-cache
content.

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mijoharas
s/rouge/rogue/ obviously a simple typo, just putting it here in case the
author didn't notice it.

~~~
AceJohnny2
I've been seeing this surprisingly frequently over the past year or two. My
first assumption was that the wrong spelling is spreading around like a meme.
My second thought was that people are relying on a spellchecker, and since
"rouge" is correct spelling of another word, not highlighting this and the
user lets it through.

~~~
mijoharas
I've got to agree, one I've noticed a lot recently is seeing people say that
they'll loose [sic] out on an opportunity or somesuch, which I attribute to
what you have suggested (as your second suggestion). I find it odd that there
are certain misspellings that crop up more and more though.

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cordite
In a few years this might be expected behavior. Like Facebook with updating
nearly all content in realtime, many enhancements to user experience demand
more network activity.

In this case, it would be intelligent prefetching.

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userbinator
This is why more routers should have a "traffic by IP" monitoring function. It
would've made troubleshooting this problem almost trivial.

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pbhjpbhj
I wonder if it's possible to provide a work-around using QoS or similar
settings on one's router.

~~~
mikeryan
The problem is your QoS won't know if the box is streaming something you want
to watch right now or something being cached.

Your best solution is likely unplugging the network or powering down (I don't
know if this is possible) when not in use.

~~~
benologist
It would be a pain in the ass to turn the wifi on/off frequently, but they
take a wired connection. You can't use the Fire TV for anything at all without
an internet connection so it's probably not viable.

