Fire TV Stick as a Low Cost no wifi Video Player

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I recently found myself needing a cheap and easy solution for playing videos on a loop at trade shows on tv and screens I may have absolutely no control over. The goal was to come up with a cheap lightweight solution that I could just pop in and go with.

Although you would think there has to be some super cheap an easy HDMI stick for this, I wasn’t able to readily find one that did this out of the box, however what I found was that the Fire TV Stick

I thought about and looked at tons of solutions, but for ease of use the Fire TV Stick kept coming up over and over.

The Hardware You Will Need

There is a variety of hardware you can use, but below is what I used and what I recommend. When purchasing this hardware using the links below also helps support our blog so if purchasing through amazon please click through below!

  1. Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite
    The Lite will do HD, but if you want to do 4K video you can just click the option to upgrade it to the 4K device. In my experience trying to play 4K video on the HD device results in a blank screen, so keep this in mind if your videos are 4K.
  2. 90° OTG hard adapter
    This allows you to connect both a USB thumb drive and power to the Fire TV Stick.
  3. Samsung FIT 128GB flash-drive
    You can use any flash-drive of your choice, but 128GB seems to be the maximum size that is recommend to connect to the Fire TV Stick and the Samsung size works perfect for the adapter.

The Apps You Will Need

VLC Viewer (Available in the Fire TV App Store)

VLC viewer is an easy to use a straight forward video playing app you can download from the Amazon App Store. It already has build in setting for looping video, making playlists and will play indefinitely once started on a loop.

Downloader (Optional – Available in the Fire TV App Store)

Downloader is exactly what it sounds like. This will allow you to go to URLs and download files from websites.

X-plorer (Optional – Available in the Fire TV App Store)

This tool will allow you to transfer files from your flash drive to the internal storage of the Fire TV Stick. However it is worth noting the internal storage isn’t very big so you will only want to transfer over apps

Auto Start – No Root (Optional – Click to Download)

As far as I can tell this app IS NOT available in the App Store. The version I have linked above is working as of Jul 19th 2024, but apparently similar apps have stopped working as updates have come out so your mileage may vary. This app IS NOT required it just makes things easier as the UI for the Fire TV Stick pretty much disappears when your offline so this allows you to have the VLC viewer automatically come up at boot.

Setting up the Device

  1. Connect the adapter to the device, but DO NOT connect the USB just yet. Then connect it to your TV (any tv will work to get setup) and then power up the device.
  2. Start by signing in and registering the device. In my case I made a dedicated firetv@ alias email address for mine so it had its own login. You will also need to be able to connect to wifi to get the Fire TV Stick setup so ensure you have good wifi for this part. Don’t worry though as once you are all setup you won’t need the wifi anymore.
  3. Decline everything, you don’t want to sign up for anything since it won’t be connected to the internet anyway. You also don’t want or need parental controls.
  4. Go to the apps store and remove or hide everything. You are only going to use VLC player once it is said and down you don’t want or need any of the pre-installed apps
  5. Connect the USB drive. It should pop up and say it needs to be formatted, when prompted select to format it for external use, otherwise you may not be able to unplug the USB and add videos. If for some reason you don’t see the prompt within a minute or two of being connected, disconnect it put it in a computer and do a fat32 format then connect it again.
  6. Once the USB is formatted by the Fire TV Stick you want to disconnect the USB then plug it into your computer and upload the MP4s of your choice, then plug it back into the fire tv stick
  7. Install and or download all the listed apps above. ( You can either load the Auto Start app onto your flash drive and use X-plorer to move it to the Fire TV Stick or you can visit this page using downloader and download it directly. )
  8. If you want to have the VLC video player app start when you boot the device (there is about a 45 second delay) you can use the Auto Start App to set VLC as the auto start. You can test it is working by unplugging and plugging back in the USB cord
    • Note that if you are on a device with Fire OS 8 this won’t work by default so you will have to go to Settings > My Fire TV > About then select the fire TV device name and click select 7 times. You will then do back to Settings > My Fire TV > Developer options and turn on ADB Debug. If you don’t already have the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) you will need to install it. Then connect using ADB XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX replacing XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX with the IP of the device then run adb shell pm grant com.newssummedup.autostartprotv android.permission.SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW that should get the autostart app working again. From there you can go back into developer options and turn ADB debug off. The auto start app should work as intended from that point forward.
  9. Once you are all done you can go into the VLC app go to browse then your flash-drive and play the videos. In my experience I had to change some of the settings for VLC to get smooth playback, but depending on your video and fire tv stick type your milage may vary. In my experience the following worked best on my Fire TV Stick Lite:
    • Hardware Acceleration: Full acceleration
    • Interface > Show Missing Media > OFF
    • Video > Videos Transition > OFF
    • Video > Match Display Frame rate > OFF
    • Advanced > Time-stretching audio > OFF
    • Advanced > OpenGL ES2 usage > Force On
    • Advanced > Deblocking Filter Settings > No deblocking (fastest)
    • Advanced > Frame Skip > On
  10. Once you have confirmed it all works you can go to setting and forget the wifi. This will disconnect you from the internet.

Opening Applications when disconnected from the internet

When you’re not connected to the internet the Home Screen with quick launch icons for your apps won’t be displayed. If you are using the auto launch this doesn’t really matter, because after anywhere from 10-45 seconds VLC will just launch on it’s own and you are good to go, however, if you need to launch VLC or any other app manually you can still do it, you just have to go the long way:

Navigate to Settings:

  • From the home screen, use the remote to navigate to the top menu and select “Settings.” You can do this by pressing the “Home” button and then scrolling to the right to find the “Settings” option.

Select Applications:

  • In the “Settings” menu, scroll down and select “Applications.”

Manage Installed Applications:

  • Within the “Applications” menu, select “Manage Installed Applications.” This will display a list of all the applications installed on your Fire Stick TV.

Choose the Application:

  • Scroll through the list to find the application you want to launch. Use the navigation buttons on the remote to highlight the desired app.

Launch the Application:

  • Select the application by pressing the “Select” button (center button) on the remote. You will see options like “Force stop,” “Uninstall,” “Clear data,” “Clear cache,” and “Launch application.”
  • Choose “Launch application” to start the app.

Conclusion

Hopefully this helps anyone looking to have an easy way to play videos at a tradeshow or for any other reason on a TV where there might not be any Internet. As always, if you guys have Waze that this article could be approved or questions just drop a comment below!

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