hey everyone welcome back to my channel
are you experiencing buffering on your
amazon fire stick well you're not
alone there are thousands and thousands
of people across the world that are
experiencing the same thing
there is a fix today's video we're going
to talk about that there are really only
three reasons why your fire stick is
buffering so we're going to cover all
three of those
in today's video right now
all right let's get started here first
thing you're going to want to do is find
out what is causing the buffering
issue for you so what i recommend doing
first and foremost before you do
anything else
is go on to your fire stick here your
amazon fire stick do a speed test now
i've done videos on how to access the
speed test on my channel if you haven't
seen those definitely check out those
videos they'll
really help you out but if you haven't
all you need to do really is just go up
to the search engine on your fire
device and type in speed test
download one of the speed testers really
doesn't matter which one you use
analytic is the most
accurate okay that's the first thing
you're going to want to do now
when you download that speed tester and
you run a speed test
on your network you're going to get a
speed number now you're going to be
looking for
the download speed not the upload speed
unless you're uploading to something
like youtube
but streaming is a download process so
you're going to look for the download
speed okay now you want that to be at
least
50 megabits per second if you're not
getting 50 this right here
portion of this video is going to be
very helpful for you so if you're not
getting at least 50 on your fire stick
there are two reasons why you might not
be getting that speed
first one would be you're not paying for
fast enough speed so
let's talk about that really quick so
your internet provider provides you
options for speed now in your area you
may not have the faster speeds but
you can certainly get a streaming speed
which is going to be
at least 200 and the reason why i say
you need at least 200
is because when you go from a hard
network to a wireless environment say
wi-fi for example
you you connect it through your fire
stick you're going to diminish about
half the speed
automatically so if you have 200 you're
down to 100 megabits per second
automatically just by going wireless
instead of ethernet connected
secondly then you're going to add a vpn
now you're going to cut that in half as
well so you're going to go from 200 to
100
100 to 50. so now you're at that
threshold where you need to be at at
least
50 megabits per second now i hope that
kind of gave you a little illustration
so basically you want to get at least
the 200 megabit per second speed on your
internet provider
this is the number one reason why people
buffer
out there around the world when you're
using a streaming device like a fire
stick is you think you pay for 50 you
get 50 but you don't
you get half that when you go wireless
and then potentially if you have
maybe a poor router you're going to get
even less than that the one they give
you is usually not a good one now i have
other videos on good routers that will
increase your speed
but one thing that a lot of people don't
realize is your location
in comparison to your router so this
goes with your service as well
so let's just say for example your fire
stick is in a basement so my fire stick
is in
an office which is in a basement so
we're i'm
really far from the router this right
here is the only reason i'm able to
stream in that now what this is is
called a range extender these are wi-fi
boosters what it does is it takes the
signal from your router
it extends it to further rooms what a
lot of people
may not realize that if you are far from
your router that speed diminishes the
further that you get it to the point
where you almost can't get a signal
what this will do right here is this
will take that signal that will boost it
so you don't lose
that speed so this is this is important
it's vital i can't do anything any of my
videos without one of
these because it keeps the speed up now
this is the rock space one here
i have the 2100 and before they had the
2100 they had the 1200
you can see the difference the intended
difference basically this is going to be
a longer range and faster speeds
so you can decide which one you want
i'll put a link in the description where
i got these ones here they're fantastic
and i've done other videos on these but
the number one
reason that most people buffer is just
because of their
service has nothing to do with the fire
stick itself or the service that they're
using it's simply
what they have at their location and it
may be all you have unfortunately it is
what it is but
if you can upgrade your speed with your
internet provider or get one of these
range extenders it would be vitally
important so
run that speed tester first find out
what your speed is if you're at least
50 we can go on to the next step here
because i've got three reasons why
you're going to buffer okay
so again if it's below 50 you might want
to consider calling your company or if
you're far from your router adding one
of these now let's talk about the number
two reason
why most people buffer and the number
two reason why most people buffer with
an amazon fire stick is the source so
what do i mean by source
basically where are you getting your
streams are you getting it from an iptv
a paid one or a free one are you getting
it from
a movie app like cinema hd or cyberflix
or morpheus something like
that that stream that source that server
that you're grabbing that information
and bringing it to your fire stick
is a reason why a lot of people buffer
so
if you did step one and you were above
50 megabits per second
this might be the reason why so if
you're using an app i'll just use
example of cinema hd and if you don't
know what that is it's a great app
reach out to me i'll be happy to help
you get something like that get you all
kinds of movies and things like that
but when you're using an app like that
you're basically taking
a signal from a remote server and
bringing it to yourself so if their
servers are slow
or that stream that you selected is just
not working great it's their fault not
yours if your speed is
enough so really look at the source that
you use
i try to pick services or sources or
places that i recommend on my channel
or my patreon channel if you don't know
what that is check it out it gives you
all kinds of great information where you
can get movies tv
sports all kinds of stuff completely
free on your amazon fire stick or
streaming devices like android boxes
check it out it helps support our
channel i really do appreciate that so
patreon is an option for you to get a
lot of great information like i'm
sharing here
quicker with additional support but the
fire stick here is a great
device but if you are pulling a bad
source from somewhere
there's nothing that your fire stick can
do there's nothing that your internet
provider can do it's the source's
fault so for example for me i use cinema
hd a lot
and when i click on something and it
buffers all i do is back out pick a
stream
lower down on the list and try it if it
buffers again i pick a stream lower down
the list and i pick that one and the
reason why i do all that is because i
know my
speed because of the range extender and
the router that i'm using
i have enough speeds that it should work
without buffering you can always find a
stream
for a tv show or a movie that does not
buffer if
ever all three of these steps are met
you have good equipment with good speed
you have a fire stick that is optimally
performed and then if you just pick a
good stream you're going to get it
so source really is the number two
reason i don't need to get into that
anymore because i want to get to number
three
the most important in my opinion because
the other stuff can be fixed by
other people this can be fixed by you so
the numbers are the number three reason
and the most important reason in my
opinion because this is something that
you can do
right now without having to purchase
anything without having to call anybody
to get a faster service or a faster
router all you need to do
is change your settings on your fire
stick and make sure that it is clean
what do i mean by clean what i mean by
clean is you don't have a lot of apps
running in your background
think of it like this the processor on
an amazon fire stick is
very small and it's not very powerful
compared to android boxes or other
devices i've reviewed
but it is a great great streaming device
so
if you have a fire sticker considering
having a fire stick you definitely want
to pay attention to this part because
i'm
i'm not only going to tell you about it
really quick but i'm going to show you
on the tv what i mean by this you want
to make sure
that all of your apps are closed after
you're done using them a lot of people
don't realize it but when you're done
using an app and you
go back to the home screen and go to a
different app it doesn't close the old
app
turning it off unpowering it putting it
to sleep unplugging from the wall
none of that closes those background
apps okay so i'm going to share with you
in this video how to close those
background apps there's also some
settings
that you're going to want to change on
here so that you're not
using up those limited resources that
you have on a small processor like this
they can't
handle 50 60 70 programs and i
would be willing to bet somebody out
there watching
runs this program that i'm going to have
you run in just a few moments
and is running at least 30 or 40
apps all at once on a tiny little
processor on here it just can't handle
it and that's going to cause some
buffering it's going to
cause some problems moving around the
screen as well
pretty much rendering this fire stick
useless
and i know there's a lot of people that
are very frustrated with their fire
stick for this very reason
so right now i'm going to get on the tv
and i'm going to go over this with you
and i'm going to share with you
where you can get a program that will
close those background apps
and change the settings that are causing
a lot
of resource buffering okay so we're
gonna do that right now let's get it on
the tv
alright so i am in front of the tv now
as you can see so what we're gonna do is
we're gonna go
over two ways that you can make sure
that your fire stick is running
optimally from a software
perspective very easy to do so the first
thing you're going to want to do is
you're going to want to find out
what is running in the background all
you need to do is get a program called
background apps and processes okay so
that's going to be found in the find
section under
search if you have the old interface all
you need to do is go to the very top
go to the left hand corner there is a
magnifying glass click that that's your
search you're going to find it the exact
same way okay or again if you have the
new interface it's located right here
old one upper left hand corner so let's
go ahead and find it go to
your search right here and then you can
just either type it in or you can just
use your voice and say
background apps and processes
and that's just the easiest way to do it
so there it is
right there this is what you are looking
for so this is going to
analyze your system and it's going to
find out how many apps you have running
in the background you'd be surprised how
many you have i keep mine pretty clear
but let's go ahead and open it up and
let's see what i have going
all right so you're just going to want
to download it i already own it but i
don't have it downloaded on this fire
stick i went ahead and removed it just
so you can see the process so we're
going to go ahead and download it
now it is installing and we're going to
go and open it up let's analyze our
system
right now and see what is running
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all right we're going to go ahead and
say got it so this is what's running in
the background
right now so what i did so you could see
what you might encounter i opened a
bunch of programs before this video
just so that i had them all up and
running as you can see all these were
running
on my device at the same time that
what do you think that's going to do to
a little processor that the fire stick
has i mean the stick's only this big how
big can the processor be
it's not very fast and it's not very
productive when you have this many
things running in the background
so i've got i mean there's just so much
on here and this is a demo stick so i do
run a lot but i just opened a whole
bunch of stuff so you could see what
yours might look like
you might have 50 or 60. i'm curious
what you have running comment down below
in the comment section of this video let
me know how many you had running i'm
just curious who had the most
i ran a video on this not too long ago
and one person said they had
60 apps running in the background i
don't know how they're even using their
fire stick now this one
was running slow as i prepared for this
demo and i said i bet you i have at
least 20 running and so sure enough
24 running in the background so how do
you close them all you need to do is
just go up here to close all apps just
like this
and what it's going to do is it's
basically a shortcut to get you right to
where you close it so you're going to go
down here to force stop that's really
what you want to do
now once you've clicked four stop you
hit the back button on your remote one
time
goes to the next app four stop back
button
i'm gonna keep this one running i always
have my expressvpn running so i'm gonna
just hit the back button
and then i'm going to go ahead and force
stop keep going just like all these
back button yeah yeah yeah four stop
and you do have to do them individually
there are apps out there that will do it
all at once for you but for whatever
reason it doesn't always work it doesn't
really close background apps i've
noticed so oops i don't want to do that
just keep doing each of these just for
stop them all and you're going to see a
huge improvement performance when you've
done
this and you should do this every day or
every other day at least especially if
you're running a lot of apps if you're
only running one or two
it's not a big deal probably not your
reason for buffering but
if you are running a lot of apps a lot
of different apps this could be a reason
why you are buffering so i'm just going
to go through and show you kind of how
to do it
so before stopping all of these let me
see if i missed any of them yeah i
missed a few
so you just continue on and you can just
keep closing them that way again go to
the top close all apps
go through each one and close them all
down keep the ones you want obviously
you need to have your vpn running at all
times when you are streaming
i use expressvpn i'll put a link in the
description where you can get three free
months
of expressvpn if that's something you
want to do but it's the fastest vpn out
there so if you're a streamer
that's the only one to get i can't
imagine using any of the other ones
but that's what you do for closing those
background apps that's probably one of
the main reasons why a lot of people
have hardware buffering on their device
if you have the speed
uh for your internet and you do have
a good signal you're pretty close to
your router and your source is
good you know your source is good
because you use it on other devices in
your house you don't have any buffering
issues
then this is probably the reason why now
the second reason why some people have
hardware buffering is because of stuff
running in the background that aren't
your app so let me just give an example
hit home on your remote control
you're going to go over here to your
settings in the far right hand corner
right there now you're going to go up
here
to your preferences okay so go to
preferences
so you're going to go featured content
and you're going to make sure these are
both off
allow video auto play and audio auto
play what that means is
when you go to your home screen right
here this will start a video
on your device now if you have some
programs running in the background maybe
a stronger program like cody something
that takes up a lot of resources
something like this video playing in the
background
will actually cause a whole lot of
problems for you so
you want to turn that off and that's
really the setting there's a few other
things for data mining and stuff but the
real big setting is that
featured content section right there
that i just shared with you so clear
those background
apps make sure that your featured
content is off you don't need to have
the audio or the video for that
because that just takes up hardware
resources that you might need so
i've covered all three of those reasons
why number one
your internet provider or your location
of your fire stick both can be fixed
one phone call or purchasing a wi-fi
extender
the second reason is your source so what
source are you getting your information
from where you're getting your apps from
where you're getting your movies from
whatever content that you're getting
where are you getting in if you have an
iptv it's probably it could very well be
their
issue not your issue if your speed is
good
and the number three way is this so what
i recommend doing is doing the speed
tester on your fire stick
if your speed is slow call your internet
provider see if you can get a faster one
or if you're far from your router
simply get an extender like the one i
shared in the beginning of the video
and then skip number two go to this one
here and just kind of play with your
fire stick make sure you have all your
background apps
closed and everything now if you've done
both of those things and they're both
good your speed's good
your fire stick is clean and you're
still buffering
i can almost guarantee it's the source
it's one of those three things i hope
this video helped you out if it did
please do me a favor just comment down
below please do that because that gives
me an idea of what i'm doing right or
wrong in my videos i appreciate
all my subscribers out there the past
few years and again if there's anything
i can do to help you out reach out to us
on patreon
i'll be happy to answer your questions
do private videos all of that stuff on
my patreon channel
gives you a direct connection right to
me if you're having any issues it really
can be an invaluable resource
i hope you enjoyed the video if you're
new to my channel don't forget to
subscribe thanks everybody
bye
[Music]
you