Nearly a year since this post: Plex on Vega OS devices (Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Select)
Any update? I also found that the h264 10-bit doesn’t work and needs to be 8-bit. The Vega OS client doesn’t even give me enough options to force the transcode and not drop to 320p and instead tries to play it direct and stutters constantly.
The only Fire Sticks that support 10-bit h.264 are the (FireOS) Fire Stick 4K and 4K Max.
Yes, it is very disappointing, especially as a Plex Pass user, that after a year, Plex still doesn’t support all the codes and features of the device: https://developer.amazon.com/docs/device-specs/device-specifications-fire-tv-streaming-media-player.html?v=ftvstickhd_2026#
That is the specs for the older Fire OS, not Vega OS device, but yes, it doesn’t list 10-bit for either Vega OS device available, but I re-encoded from H.265 to H.264 due to this (see link in original post asking for update from Plex): Direct playback of personal media content is limited to H.264 with AAC audio and a bitrate of 7Mbps.
I originally reencoded with this not realizing that it would default to 10-bit (due to the H.265 being 10-bit):
ffmpeg -i “INPUT_FILE” -map 0:v -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -maxrate 4M -bufsize 4M -preset fast -map 0:a? -c:a aac -map 0:s? -c:s copy -map 0:t? -c:t copy “OUTPUT_FILE”
Now I am using:
ffmpeg -i “INPUT_FILE” -map 0:v -vf “scale=1280:720,format=yuv420p” -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -maxrate 4M -bufsize 4M -preset fast -map 0:a? -c:a aac -map 0:s? -c:s copy -map 0:t? -c:t copy “OUTPUT_FILE”
But if the H.265 would just work, then it wouldn’t be an issue:
So back to my original question, is there any update on the status of supporting the full functionality of the newer Fire TV Sticks with Vega OS?
They are the specs of the current Fire Stick 4K Max.
There is no device named “Fire Stick 4K Max” that runs VegaOS.
I posted the specs to illustrate the support for Hi10P listed for the device.
I actually am suspecting the abilities of the device are being paygated by Amazon when it comes to 4K/HDR.
