If you are having issues with the NFL app on your Fire TV Stick, Cube, whatever, read this...

I signed up with NFL+ Premium this year for $15 a month because I simply could not afford the cheapest $70 a month alternative this year to get NFL RedZone. A nice bonus is getting full and condensed game replays. That being said, my experience with this app over the first two weeks of NFL RedZone has been a nightmare using the latest NFL app on Fire TV devices. Here are the 4 devices I own and what happened on each when I tried to use the app after updating everything to the latest software:

Compatible
1. Fire TV Cube - 2nd Gen (2019) - Crashed about 2 hours into RedZone, would often freeze
2. Toshiba Fire TV (2022) - Same as above
3. Fire TV Stick Lite - 1st Gen (2020) - Crashed every hour and had to be re-started
4. Fire TV Stick 4K - 1st Gen (2018) - (Older Fire OS 6) After about 1-2 hours, picture would deteriorate and become very blurry forcing relaunch of app - Not good for RedZone watching

If you look up the last 20 recent Amazon reviews of this app, every single one gives it one star except for one which gives it two stars. I encourage you to read them all.

I want to thank Chad Cloman because his review on Amazon saved me from buying a new gen Fire TV Stick thinking the NFL app might work better on it. His review on watching live and recorded footage using this app is spot on and I encourage you to read it. I also tried the website alternative which was not much better and which defaults to muting the sound and not full screen unless you know where to find the controls to unmute the sound and make it full screen. But there is a much better alternative...

In one of the Amazon forums complaining about this app someone said "It works on Roku". I previously bought several Roku devices before I switched to Fire TV devices. The two most recent ones I bought way back in 2017 were the Roku Express+ (3910) and the Roku Streaming Stick (3800). They both have only 512MB of memory (in contrast to the 2GB of memory in my top two Fire TV devices) and only my Roku 3800 has dual band Wi-Fi. At the Roku website, I was encouraged to read that these models still could be updated to the latest Roku OS. So after finding both devices in my storage and pairing the remotes for each (you need a voice remote to re-pair them if it doesn't work) I went about the long process of updating the software in each. (Keep updating the Roku OS until you are on version 13.) I then downloaded and installed the latest NFL app for Roku which was updated this month (Sept 2024) unlike the NFL app for Fire TV which appears to have not been updated in over a year. (10/4/24: Now it has, but it's not improved.)

To cut to the chase, the NFL app on Roku runs MUCH smoother than the app on Fire TV. In fact, it's not even close. I just got done watching the replay of the Eagles-Falcons Monday night game and it didn't freeze or crash once. And the fast forward and rewind function on the Roku NFL app is so superior it's not even funny. About 3 hours after games end, you also get 5 individual screens at the bottom of the screen showing where it is in the game, not just the one screen you get with the Fire TV version. When my Rokus from 2017 have much less powerful processors and 1/4th the memory of my top Fire TV devices, there is no reason the Roku NFL app should run this much better than the Fire TV version.

I now have both Rokus set up on the bedroom and living room TV's and I am using it only to use the NFL app while watching everything else on my Fire TV devices. If you have an old Roku lying around this is by far the best solution I have found for using the NFL app. And if you don't own a Roku, they can be had for cheap in the $20 to $30 range on Amazon new and used, all of which are newer than the 2017 Rokus I am currently using which work great with the NFL app.

UPDATE 10/4/24: I just updated the Fire TV NFL app to 18.0.78. Unfortunately, while it may be a bit more stable, the interface is still bad. I tested both apps on all my devices again re-watching the Thursday night Bucs-Falcons game. On the Fire TV app you can only fast forward or rewind in 30 second increments, and every time you do it takes at least a couple seconds for the picture to stabilize. This is only using the fast forward and rewind buttons. Using any other method it's worse. On the Roku app you can fast forward or rewind in 10 second increments using left or right on the purple cross, and the picture comes up almost immediately. Still much better on Roku even after the Fire TV app update.

Brand	N/A
Rating	3.9 (165230 ratings)
Price	$N/A
Category	Apps & Games