Streaming: HBO Max blocks older Fire TV Sticks

HBO Max is becoming more selective: The streaming service now only runs on Fire TV devices that support at least Fire OS 6. At the market launch in Germany, devices with Fire OS 5 were still supported. In practice, this means that some older Fire TV devices are now being phased out.

HBO informs its customers about this in an English-language support entry, as first reported by AFTVNews. A look at the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine reveals that the new requirement was added to the support document between April 17th and April 26th. Affected users may therefore have already noticed that their streaming devices have been blocked meanwhile.

The German product page does not specify which Fire OS versions are supported, but the support information from the English-language document should apply internationally.

Fire TV Stick 2 affected

Fire OS 5 is a version of Amazon's Fire operating system based on Android 5.1. The devices now being blocked are generally quite old: Fire TVs of the first and second generation, as well as the first and second generation Fire TV Stick, which was built until 2019, are impacted. An overview of the OS versions of the various Fire TV devices can be found on an Amazon support page.

It is not unusual for users of these older devices to be blocked from streaming: Disney+ also runs exclusively on Fire TV devices from OS version 6. Netflix has also excluded several Fire TV devices with OS version 5 from streaming. It is unclear how many of these older streaming sticks and televisions are still in circulation or actively used.

Amazon has since replaced Fire OS with its new Vega operating system, which is used on new Fire TV Sticks. Vega is a Linux-based operating system that differs from the previous Fire OS primarily under the hood. Among other things, it is no longer possible to install Android apps via sideloading under Vega OS. (dahe)