Amazon continues to make waves with its popular Fire TV Stick and Fire TV devices. Both open up a world of entertainment for consumers who want to enjoy a combination of online and cable TV programs. The Firestick is definitely a low-cost solution to unlimited content, including live sports events in HD quality, TV series, HD movies and more.
The only downside with using the Firestick device is that it’s vulnerable to occasional buffering issues. Although this problem only lasts for a few seconds or minutes at the most, being forced to wait for your show to begin or continue can be quite annoying.
The good news is it’s possible to fix buffering on Firestick. In this article, we’ll share with you all the different techniques that you can use to identify and fix slow streaming problems.
Checking for Fire TV Buffering Errors
You might think that you’re alone in dealing with buffering issues with your Fire TV or Firestick device, but that’s not the case. This is a running problem with these devices and almost every user who owns them complains about the same thing.
The key to fixing the issue is to identify the source of the problem first because it’s not always the same cause.
What is the Reason Behind These Buffering Errors?
The Firestick device automatically downloads the content you stream so that it’s available in a temporary cache. So, when you’re watching a video it’s actually playing from the cache. Meanwhile, the device continues to download the next chunk of content at the same time. This means that it has to juggle two tasks at once, and this is what sometimes causes buffering issues.
If you happen to finish the first part of the movie while the Firestick is still downloading the next chunk of content, it’ll inevitably show you a buffering message. The Firestick will pause the video while it’s downloading the rest of the content in an effort to update the player.
The problem could be worse if you’re using one of those low-powered and smaller Fire TV Sick devices. They’re often short on cache storage space and they don’t have the fastest download speeds. That’s what causes the drawn-out buffering interruptions that they’re famous for.
Now that we understand what causes buffering, it’s time to take a look at the reasons behind the lack of synchronization between the downloading of new content and playback of cached videos.
• ISP Throttling
Internet Service Providers (ISP) are known for purposefully slowing down loading speeds and this can negatively affect your Firestick viewing experience. ISPs periodically scan for particular traffic categories that they want to discourage their users from watching, which is what often happens to Fire TV Stick users.
• Hardware Limitations
Your buffering issues might be coming from the Fire TV hardware itself or it could be a problem with your modem, Ethernet cable or router.
• Remote Server Malfunctions
Server malfunctions can also cause slower buffering speeds when watching certain kinds of content.
• Slow Internet Connection
Perhaps your home internet connection is struggling to handle the demands of a particular stream.
• Too many Devices on your Wifi network
If you have too many devices using your wifi connection then this can cause slow bandwidth for your streaming device. Reboot the router to drop off all connected devices.
