![]() After switching to Pan and Zoom, those numbers went down significantly to 68 megabytes and. The bigger resultsĪccording to Digital Trends’ network service provider, the Fire TV ran at an average of 6.26 Mbps, eating up 1.408 gigabytes (download) and spitting out 43 megabytes (upload) while in Mosaic mode. That being the case, we expected to see a sudden ramp up about five minutes in, and then a sudden ramp down 5-10 minutes before the end of the test. The screensaver only runs for about 20 minutes before the screen simply goes dark. We monitored the Fire TV’s data consumption over the course of two 30 minute segments, once with the Fire TV set to Mosaic mode, and again set to Pan and Zoom mode, which, according to Amazon, is meant to alleviate the problem. I then set the Fire TV’s screensaver to activate after five minutes of inactivity. To set up the test, I plugged the Fire TV into an Ethernet port that would be closely monitored by Digital Trends’ network service provider. But I set out to find out how much bandwidth was getting used up when the Fire TV was leeching data, as well as how much data was being consumed over a given period of time, both down and upstream. To Amazon’s credit, its recognition of the problem and stated intent to fix it is encouraging. According to Amazon, the device suffers from a bug wherein instead of displaying a series of cached images (very high-quality, large file-size images, mind you) it was actually streaming those images over the Internet, hence the big data draw. In response to Hayes’ blog post, Amazon said that the culprit of this data use was likely due to the device’s screensaver – specifically the “Mosaic” setting. That was enough for me to pull the set-top box into Digital Trends’ offices for a more comprehensive – and accurate – series of tests. By the next day, I had run through about 17GB of data. (I should note here that I did confirm my Wi-Fi network hadn’t been hijacked by any freeloaders). I immediately began checking my meter every hour or so and was dismayed to see it tick up 1GB to 2GB per hour with periodic use of the Fire TV box. According to the same meter, my household consumption soared in April to 413 GB (I installed the Fire TV mid-month), 632 GB in May and 526GB in June. Since then, my family’s video streaming habits haven’t changed much – though, admittedly, we stream nearly all of our TV content, having ceased cable service late last year. My household consumption soared to 632GB in May and 526GB in June.The last time I checked my monthly home Internet data usage (in February) it was well below the 250 GB mark, according to Comcast’s online meter tool. For now, Comcast doesn’t enforce its 250 GB data cap in my area, so it was Hayes’ alert that prompted me to look into my own house’s data consumption over the past three months. Tyler Hayes was the first to discover the Fire TV’s secret little problem when he got a not-so-friendly letter from his ISP that he had blown through a lot of data in not much time. Beware: If you own a Fire TV box, there’s a possibility it’s gunning for your data cap, if not blowing it away entirely – and your ISP isn’t going to like that. Sure, the little black box and its lone LED look innocent enough, but in reality, the Fire TV is like a stealthy, bloodthirsty vampire quietly gorging itself on gigabytes of your precious Internet data while supposedly doing nothing at all. Just look at its short stature, tiny footprint, and tidy little remote – how darling! In fact, the Fire TV is so unobtrusive, you could easily lose it in the mess of black boxes that live under your TV and forget it was even there. When I first saw the Amazon Fire TV, I couldn’t get over how cute it was.
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