Fire TV Developer Tools and Hidden Menus / Buffering on Recast or Antenna Channels

Fire TV Developer Tools and Hidden Menus / Buffering on Recast or Antenna Channels

The Fire TV has some developer tools that give you more information about the Fire TV, including the video connection, CPU usage, Memory usage, and network information.

You can invoke the Developer Tools menu with the Remote Control:
  1. On the directional pad, press and hold the Center button for a second
  2. Then (still holding down Center), press the Down button
  3. Hold both buttons for about 3-4 seconds
  4. Release both buttons and press the remote's Options (the one with 3 horizontal lines) button
One of the more useful items in here is the actual WiFi signal strength.  RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator): Shows how strong the WiFi signal is, measured in dBm (value of radio signal). The bar indicates the signal strength and is color-coded using the same color coding scheme as the CPU section to indicate the severity of a problem (green is strong, orange is average, and red is weak). The number is always negative – with better signal strength, the number moves closer to 0.

There is another hidden menu that gives you network information not only for the Fire TV, but also the Fire TV Recast.
  1. Press and hold Rewind and Left for 3 seconds, release, then immediately press the Options button (the one with 3 horizontal lines).
This opens up a 711 Page, with some info, but at the bottom, there is a "Disable congestion optimizer" checkbox.  Some customers have found that checking this box helps with buffering issues from the Recast to the Fire TV stick, especially when the Recast is wired to the network via Ethernet.