Yeah, the older ones are gone. But they still work well and seem to still be supported.
But the Fire devices go through similar cycles of discontinue/issue new. And, as of yet, updates are not primarily for the purpose of limiting the manner in which one can utilize the device, unlike the Fire TV family.
Miki, even though I’m retired, my various obligations do get into conflicts with games that I want to see…and Tivimate does well doing that most of the time. I’m somewhat surprised that at least some of your expat peeps don’t run into similar conflicts that I do.
I’m often surprised as well. When I started doing this, I thought there would be a huge demand for recording. Just didn’t happen. Oh well, ppl will never fail to surprise you.
“I’m often surprised as well. When I started doing this, I thought there would be a huge demand for recording. Just didn’t happen. Oh well, ppl will never fail to surprise you.”
True Dat 
I have two FTV 4K Max Gen 1 set up to block automatic updates on FireOS 7.6.9.7. Both have OTG connections with external USB flash partitioned for internal and external storage. Some apps are run from USB so I use up only 3.3 of 5.33GB internal space. Most often used sideloaded apps are Projectivy, Launcher Manager, Stremio, Sportsfire, and SmartTube.
Everything is working. I remotely connect for ADB. For major streaming subs (Prime Video, Apple TV+, etc) my LG TV’s WebOS has native apps.
Should I replace the FTV sticks with the 4K Plus? I can foresee that some app updates may no longer be compatible with an older FireOS, but I’m not sure if this is compelling enough to fix things that have not broken. Yet.
I would get the 4k max on sale from Amazon. The max has 16 gig of storage.You will need to block the Amazon updates on router otherwise this new stick will update to latest and prevent you from applying the exploit.
The need for workarounds for Amazon restrictions makes me less keen to stay with their streaming products.
I’d just stay with the firesticks until they no longer work with the apps you use on a daily basis. The Onn 4k Plus is the better product (faster, more storage) but most of us are perfectly OK with the firesticks (until we’re not).
How do you stop your fire sticks from updating?
@Tmkowalski Here is what I used. Note that you may need to remotely interact with ADB to grant Launcher Manager permissions.
If you’re comfortable changing the settings of your router, you can block the domains serving the updates:
I want to keep my IPTV services on my Fire TV stick. Is there a way to make sure that I don’t get any further updates because I’m worrying about getting that new operating system and not being able to use my iptvs?
@jakko
I’ll tell ya, with the state of the Fire Operating System I would recommend that you should probably figure on picking up one of the ONN boxes from Wally World. It appears, pretty certain, that Amazon is going to stop everything other than what is normally loaded on the Sticks that they approve of. So it seems that it is a losing battle for the Fire Stick world.
There is load of reviews and tutorials to get you going with ONN stuff.
I know of a program that you can put on it so it does not take updates its called netguard look for the video on it and it works well and will not let the firestick take a update it will show error when you try to check it for updates. I just updated a couple of my firesticks to the latest update and everything works great with them and then I put netguard back on to stop any more updates.
I tried to search for this answer, but didn’t find it. I was able to successfully apply the blocker per the instructions provided here, Thank you!!!
The problem that I need help with now, is that the blocker, blocks all app updates. So, every time I launch Xfinity Stream, Netflix now, I get a message that there is an app update available. Annoying, but able to bypass the message to continue to use the app. The real problem is the Prime App. There is an update here, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to bypass that message, it requires me to update. So, I am no longer able to view Prime on my firestick.
For any of the updates, If I try to update any of the apps, nothing happens. The downloads will not start and thus not update.
Anyone else experience this, and have a workaround?
Thanks in advance.
I highly doubt Amazon will be converting Fire OS devices to Vega. As of now Amazon not blocking IPTV players like Tivimate or Smarters. If you have a router you can change firewall settings on, you could follow @TROYPOINT video to block future updates. If your ISP provided your router, you most likely won’t be able to change the firewall settings.