With this week's disappointing release of the new Fire TV Stick HD, Amazon's second streaming device to run its Vega operating system, the future of Android-based Fire TVs is looking bleak.

VPNs are one of the many things missing from Vega OS on the Fire TV Stick 4K Select. That may change soon because IPVanish says VPN functionality is coming later this month to Vega OS.

Beyond the fact that Vega OS on the new Fire TV Stick 4K Select does not support sideloaded apps, the biggest issue with it is that every existing Fire TV app has to be rewritten, since it no longer runs the Android-based Fire OS used by all previous models.

Rumors have circulated for years that Amazon plans to replace its Android-based Fire TV operating system, Fire OS, with a new in-house Linux-based system called Vega OS. Despite already using Vega OS on a few Echo devices, Amazon has been silent about moving away from Android on Fire TV devices.

There have been a lot of rumors and speculation about Fire TV devices moving away from Fire OS when the next batch of new models is announced. Several reports say new Fire TVs will run Vega OS, Amazon's new Linux-based operating system, but there are also hints that some new Fire TV models will be r...

Roku has announced two new streaming devices to replace its two least expensive models. The new Roku Streaming Stick is a 1080p device for $29.99 that replaces the outgoing Roku Express and the Roku Streaming Stick Plus is a 4K version for $39.99 that replaces the Roku Express 4K+.

Amazon has been rumored to be working on a Fire TV model running its in-house Vega OS operating system, instead of its usual Android-based Fire OS, for some time.

A report last year claimed that Amazon was working on an operating system, called Vega OS, as a replacement for the Android-based operating system it has been using on Echo and Fire TV devices for years.