A few days ago I bought a new Fire TV. My old Fire TV is still in Berlin, but that's another story.
The new one runs an operating system called VegaOS. A new operating system can be fine. I expected some rough edges. What I didn't expect was that it would stop me from running Android APKs like the previous Fire TV did.
That feels like a serious mistake.
Not everyone needs to install APKs. I do. More importantly, removing a capability that already existed means that owners now depend almost entirely on Amazon's app store. That is a pretty effective form of vendor lock-in, and not a particularly subtle one.
If I find a Fire TV competitor that lets me install the software I choose, I might switch immediately. I don't enjoy being told that a device I bought is only useful inside one company's narrow software catalog.
The app store problem
Amazon's app store is limited compared with Google Play and its many alternatives. That becomes obvious when you search for something ordinary.
I looked for an IPTV player.
I couldn't find one that worked for me. Not a great one. Not an average one. Nothing I wanted to use.
So I started building one with Asere, my AI assistant.
From a web project to VegaOS
We forked a repository that was originally aimed at the web and adapted it for VegaOS. The first version had an M3U parser, D-pad navigation, a video player, and the usual collection of things that work until you put them on an actual television.
Then the app crashed.
The IPTV list was around 40 MB. The app tried to download and parse the whole thing, and Hermes ran out of heap. The fix was not to hope that the television would find more memory. We changed the design: load Xtream categories first, then request channels, movies, and series only when the user opens them. Each list is capped so the device doesn't have to swallow the whole service at once.
It now runs on VegaOS. The interface still needs work, and there are plenty of details left to improve, but the core is there: a personal IPTV client running on the Fire TV that isn't an Android APK and didn't come from Amazon's store.
What comes next
I'm cleaning up the UI now. When it's decent enough not to embarrass me, I'll publish the GitHub link.
This is a personal project. Use your own legally authorised lists and services. I'm not trying to build another app store in a weekend.
Amazon, thanks for nothing.
And to everyone with a new Fire TV, or anything else running VegaOS: you're welcome.