The VideoLAN Forums

I've just got a couple of Amazon Fire for Kids tablets so my kids can watch their favourite DVD's on the move.... or so I thought!

Ripping and playing the films on the Fire isn't a problem - I've got that all worked out... the issue is how VLC works on the special kids mode accounts when Wi-Fi is off or unavailable.

I can run VLC and play all the video files I've made on the main user account... perfectly - it's a great player...

But when the app is shared to the kids account it works - except when I tap the 'back' arrow - as it then tries to download and I get the no Wi-Fi error.

What is it trying to download and can this be stopped?

Even when Wi-Fi is on it seems to be slow to download and get working again. This seems to be the case for all Apps that I give the kids account access to... so I don't really think it's a specific problem with VLC.

But it is a problem EVERYONE with a Fire for Kids will have...

Anyone got any ideas?

All I can think of is either returning the Fire for Kids (not being able to use the kids accounts without Wi-Fi is a potential deal breaker I think) or using my phone as a hotspot until Amazon sort themselves out.

Sorry, but we have no idea. We don't have such setup, and we have no idea what it tries to download...

S'ok.... turns out it was the Fire - it was having problems with the SD card access. Stuff saved to the SD card needed constant downloading as in the original post - but if the app was saved to the main Fire storage it worked. This wasn't due to the SD card because the same thing happened when using different SD cards. These cards all worked fine in another Fire too - so everything was ruled out apart from a faulty Fire.

I've returned it for a refund.

FuZZbaLL I got one for the exact same reasons and I've just started getting this same issue after roughly a month of the device working fine.

Was the only solution you had to replace the device?

Did you get a replacement and does it work fine?

I returned both for a refund.

First one for the problem in this thread - saving to SD didn't work and the apps constantly needed to be downloaded. I didn't want a replacement because I think they send out refurbished rather than new units.

Second one because the device is UTTERLY impotent without an Internet connection. It 'phones home' every time you activate the kids account presumably to check the status of the subscription and doesn't work if it cannot do this successfully. So I don't really see the point of it - you cannot use it on journeys without a WiFi connection - wholly impractical. I suppose you could use your phone as a WiFi hotspot, but my phone is also my SatNav so that's not really an option for me.

And it'll drain the battery and chew up the data plan because most phone companies treat WiFi hotspot mode differently to Internet data downloads on the phone itself.

Thanks for the reply.

Looks like i'll be sending mine back also as only purpose is for it to be used while travelling so pointless when it keeps trying to have wifi.

Don't want to have to turn phone into hotspot, just want a device that works.