Amazon Fire TV Devices Start Showing Fullscreen Video Ads on Startup

Amazon’s Fire TV sticks are currently among the best-selling electronics on Amazon today, but you may want to think twice before taking advantage of Black Friday discounts on these devices. Indeed, it appears that Amazon has started showing full-screen ads to some Fire TV users when they turn on their devices.

Reddit user RadioactiveT (via FlatPanelsHD) shared the following video showing a fullscreen video ad starting to play automatically right after startup. “This behavior occurs every time I turn on the TV from any source. Voice, Fire remote, or FireTV app,” the Reddit user said.

Latest update on FireTV causes ads to immediately play on startup!
byu/RadioactiveT inamazonecho

Other people in the thread said that they’ve been seeing similar auto-playing video ads. However, it appears that disabling “autoplay” and personalized ads in settings is enough to turn them off.

Amazon’s Fire TV sticks are really cheap, and that’s probably why the Fire TV home screen is already filled with ads (and not just for movies and TV shows). However, the “in your face” aspect of these fullscreen ads on startup is probably too much.

Even though Fire TV devices use ancient versions of Android, the software and general user experience are really decent… if you don’t take the ads into account. If the company keeps going down that route, it will probably make Fire TV devices hard to recommend.

According to a recent report, Amazon is currently working on a new in-house OS to replace Android on its Fire TV and Echo Show smart displays. While details are still scarce, it’s hard to imagine that Amazon is going to slow down on its advertising push unless enough consumers get vocal about it.