“Traditional signal-conditioning methods wouldn’t work because of the sheer speed of 4K. With 4K, however, it was a different proposition altogether.

Previous generations of Amazon’s Fire TV streaming media sticks were designed for lower-resolution TVs, with a lower rate of data transfer, so this noise was filterable, says Rajagopalan. An HDMI stick, with its sensitive antennas for picking up Wi-Fi signals, sits very close to the TV, exacerbating the RFI challenge. “It was crucial to resolve any interference or noise issues, so that we could deliver a reliable 4K viewing experience for our customers, without buffering issues,” says Jagan Rajagopalan, senior radio frequency systems engineer at Lab126, who led the engineering team.īut the imperative of keeping the new device below $50, and therefore using a stick form, created a big challenge. The engineers quickly realized that, with 4K, noise is not an option. This interference - a headache for electrical engineers the world over - is caused by the radio-frequency noise emitted by electronic circuits. This data rate leaves virtually no room for error, and Amazon’s previous Fire TV Stick, which was not designed for 4K, experienced radio frequency interference (RFI) at 4K speeds, creating a patchy viewing experience.

The critical issue that made this engineering task particularly challenging ties to the high data rate required to stream 4K video content over Wi-Fi. If you make it a weird shape, it's not a stick anymore.” Noise is not an option “If you make it too big, it doesn't fit at the back of the TV. “The size! Initially we thought we couldn't do it at all,” recalls Deepak Pai, a senior wireless system engineer at Amazon Lab126 in Sunnyvale, California. They concluded that the best way to keep the materials cost low enough would be to create a small, all-in-one HDMI stick. Determined to improve value to the customer, Amazon product managers wanted to create a device that would be cost effective while delivering a quality streaming solution. From left to right, Deepak Pai, a senior wireless system engineer Jagan Rajagopalan, senior radio frequency systems engineer and Mohammed Azad, senior antenna design engineer, were some of the engineers who overcame serious challenges to launch the Fire TV Stick 4K.īefore the Fire TV Stick 4K launched, Amazon had other 4K streaming devices on the market, including the Fire TV pendant and Fire TV Box, but at $70 some considered these too expensive.

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