AMAZON has finally brought back a popular feature to new Fire TV Sticks after an almost two month absence.
The tech giant launched a fresh Fire TV Stick 4K Select in October that looked the same on the surface but had some major changes under the hood.
One significant part of the overhaul is that illegal streaming apps are now banned.
That’s because Amazon switched the Fire TV Stick operating system from Android to its own Vega one which gives the firm more control.
This means it can restrict so-called “sideloading” which was exploited by illegal streaming app operators to show Premier League matches on the cheap and newly released movies.
It’s a move also designed to protect users who might be tempted to use illegal streams, as such apps are well-known for being used to raid people’s bank accounts with sneaky fraud.
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But the change to a new operating system also meant some legitimate apps were unable to work right away from launch in October.
And those are VPNs.
VPNs are popular for protecting privacy and safety online.
They are favoured by TV pirates as well, but with the block on illegal streaming apps a VPN won’t be any use to them now.
Experts often recommend them as VPNs encrypt your online activity, scrambling it so that it can’t be spied on.
This is very useful if you’re connecting to public Wi-Fi, at a coffee shop.
It was previously expected that VPN support would be added to the Fire TV Stick 4K Select in late October but it never happened.
The lack of VPN support has frustrated buyers, especially after racing to purchase the device with Black Friday sales.
“I need VPN, I regret buying it, I don’t want this, gonna have to probably just bin it,” one person wrote in the Amazon product page reviews.
“Waste of my money. All I wanted to do was upgrade my old TV stick.”
Well, users can finally start to use VPNs on the device.
However, it’s currently limited to just two brands.
Those are NordVPN and IPVanish.
You’ll find both in the Amazon Appstore now to download.
It was only the new Fire TV Stick model that was affected by the move – existing devices have continued to have access to VPNs as normal.
STREAM SMARTER – NOT MORE DANGEROUSLY
HERE’S some advice from The Sun’s tech editor Sean Keach…
The fact that millions of Brits are turning to piracy isn’t a surprise.
Telly subscriptions are now wildly expensive, and it’s increasingly hard to justify having them all.
I mean a top-tier Netflix subscription will cost you £17.99 a month, while Disney+ comes in at £14.99 a month.
And the offering seems to be getting worse: Amazon now shows ads on your Prime Video movies and shows unless you pay extra (on top of your Prime membership) to remove them.
That’s an extra £2.99 on top of the regular £8.99 fee.
Netflix, meanwhile, just hiked prices in the US – and experts told The Sun that a UK rise is likely to follow.
And if you pay for Sky – and extra services like Sky Sports – then your costs will simply balloon.
So what are you to do?
Well one of the best strategies to cut your TV bills is to try something called “service cycling”.
That’s where you only have one TV service active at a time, and then rotate through a list.
So one month you pay for Netflix and watch all of its top telly.
Then scrap it and move on to Disney+ the next month, before binning that and going to Amazon for the third month.
Do this with three or four services then start the whole process over again.
It means you’ll get three or four months in each year to watch all of each app’s content.
So you won’t miss any top shows, but you’ll avoid paying for all of the apps every single month for an entire year.
It brings enormous savings and you won’t miss out on any great telly either.
Plus it’s totally legal, so you don’t have to worry about that.
