Getting Astra working
Astra talks to a Jellyfin server you run yourself, which means almost everything that goes wrong is a conversation between three things: your Fire TV, your network, and your server. This page walks through setup, explains what each setting actually changes, and lists the fixes for the problems people hit most.
Setting Astra up
The whole first run takes about two minutes, and only one person ever has to do it. After that anyone in the house can pick up the remote.
1. Install it
Search for Astra on your Fire TV, or open the Amazon Appstore listing in a browser and send it to your device. Astra needs a Fire TV running Vega OS 1.2 or later — that is the newer generation of sticks, the ones where Jellyfin's own app is not available. Older Fire TV devices run Android and should use the regular Jellyfin app instead.
2. Point it at your server
Astra looks for Jellyfin servers on your local network and offers what it finds. If your server is somewhere else, type the address in full, including http:// or https:// and the port — for example http://192.168.1.50:8096. Both plain local HTTP and remote HTTPS work.
3. Sign in
You have two options, and Quick Connect is the one worth using. Astra shows a six-digit code; you approve it from the Jellyfin app or web page on a phone or laptop that is already signed in. No password typed on a remote, one letter at a time. If Quick Connect is turned off on your server, a normal username and password works too.
4. Answer two questions
The first time Astra meets a server it asks whether that server has a graphics card, and whether the room has surround sound. “I don't know” is a real answer — Astra corrects its own guesses as you watch things. These live in Settings > Playback > Server transcoding and Settings > Playback > Audio output if you want to change them later.
5. Hand over the remote
Several Jellyfin accounts and several servers can be saved at once and switched from the Home screen, so everyone gets their own watch history and their own Continue Watching row.
Astra has no account of its own, no subscription, and no catalog. Your sign-in is stored on the Fire TV and used only to talk to your server. Nothing about what you watch leaves your network.
What the settings actually do
Most people never need to open these. They are here for when something specific is wrong.
Playback
- Server transcoding — whether your server can re-encode demanding files on a graphics card, on the processor only, or unknown. Telling Astra the truth here stops it asking a CPU-only server to do work that will only ever buffer.
- Audio output — stereo, 5.1, or 7.1, matching your TV or receiver. Note that 7.1 requires the file to play untouched; anything the server has to convert is capped at 5.1 by the device.
- Max streaming bitrate — the ceiling Astra asks for. Lower it if playback stutters over Wi-Fi or the internet; leave it unlimited on a wired local network.
- Test server connection — measures the actual speed between this Fire TV and your server and recommends a bitrate. Run this before guessing.
- Subtitle mode — default per video, all subtitles on, all off, or only forced subtitles. Choosing a track inside the player still affects only that one video.
- Preferred audio language and Preferred subtitle language — which track Astra reaches for first when a file has several.
- Next episode autoplay — with an adjustable countdown. Astra stops to ask after three episodes in a row rather than running all night on its own.
- Skip intro/credits — ask, skip automatically, or ignore. This uses the intro and credit markers your Jellyfin server already knows about, so it is accurate rather than a guessed offset.
- Seek duration — how far the arrow keys jump.
- HLS segment length — leave on Auto unless you are chasing a specific startup or seeking problem.
- Stats for Nerds — a live overlay of codecs, audio track, bitrate, buffer, and dropped frames. If you are about to report a playback problem, this screen has most of what is worth sending.
Customization
- Home sections — choose which rows appear on Home and which do not.
- Display preferences — image size, artwork type, and grid direction.
- Focused backdrop blur — the blurred art behind browsing screens. Turning it off is slightly lighter on older hardware.
- Music — show or hide Music and Playlists.
Login
- Automatic sign in — go straight to the most recently used account, or always stop at the picker.
- Manage servers — add another server, sign an account out, or remove one.
When something is not working
Astra cannot find my server
Automatic discovery only sees servers on the same network segment, so it misses anything on a different VLAN, a guest network, or the other side of a VPN. Type the address in by hand instead, including the scheme and port: http://192.168.1.50:8096. If that fails too, open the same address in a browser on a phone connected to the same Wi-Fi — if the browser cannot reach it either, the problem is the network or the server, not Astra.
Everything buffers constantly
Buffering almost always means your server is re-encoding the video rather than sending it as-is, and cannot keep up. Three things to check, in order:
- Open Stats for Nerds during playback. If it says the video is being transcoded, that is the cause.
- Check Settings > Playback > Server transcoding is honest about whether your server has a graphics card.
- Run Test server connection and set Max streaming bitrate to what it recommends.
If you are on Astra 1.3.0 or earlier and this started when you turned subtitles on, update — 1.4.0 fixed exactly that. Subtitles no longer force a full re-encode.
Subtitles do not appear, or they force the video to reload
From 1.4.0, Astra draws ordinary text subtitles itself — SRT, WebVTT, and the subtitles stored inside MP4 files — and switching between those is instant. Picture-based subtitles (PGS, VOBSUB) and heavily styled ASS/SSA cannot be drawn on this device, so the server has to paint them into the picture, which does mean rebuilding the stream. The player marks every track Instant or Reloads so you can see which is which before you pick one.
If no subtitles show at all, check Settings > Playback > Subtitle mode is not set to All subtitles off, and that the file actually carries a subtitle track in Jellyfin.
HDR movies look washed out and grey
Fixed in 1.3.0 — the server was being asked to convert HDR down to SDR on the way to the TV. Update Astra. If it still happens on 1.4.0 or later, please open an issue with the file's video codec and HDR format, because that would be a different cause.
A long movie stops partway through and dumps me back to the menu
Fixed in 1.4.0. The Fire TV was reclaiming Astra's video roughly an hour into an uninterrupted film, because the system's own notice that a video is playing does not survive a feature-length runtime. Astra now holds that notice open for as long as a video is open, including while paused. Update, and a two-hour film plays start to finish.
I am not getting 7.1 surround
7.1 only survives when the file plays untouched. The moment your server has to convert the audio — because of the codec, a bitrate cap, or a subtitle burn-in — the device caps it at 5.1. Check Settings > Playback > Audio output is set to 7.1, and use Stats for Nerds to confirm the audio is being copied rather than converted.
A 4K file will not start at all
Astra 1.4.0 fixed one cause of this, where the server handed back a stream in a form Astra could not use. If a 4K file still refuses to play on 1.4.0 or later, it is likely Dolby Vision, which is being tracked in issue #21 — a report with the file's codec, HDR format, and Dolby Vision profile is genuinely useful there.
Where is Live TV?
Not supported yet. It is tracked in issue #10 and is waiting on tuner and guide hardware to develop against, since it cannot honestly be built without something real to test on.
Astra signed me out after an update
This should not happen any more and did not happen on the 1.4.0 update. If it does, sign in again with Quick Connect — it takes a few seconds — and please say so in an issue, including which version you updated from and to. Credentials surviving an update is something that has to be verified on real hardware every release, so a report matters.
Which version am I on?
Settings > About shows the version and build number, for example 1.4.0 (20260908.14). Amazon rolls updates out over a day or two after a release is published, so the newest version on the release notes page may take a little while to reach your device.
Still stuck?
Astra has no crash reporting that phones home — nothing about your library or your viewing leaves your network — which means a problem on your hardware is invisible until somebody describes it. Opening an issue is the whole feedback loop.
The issue form asks for these, and reports that include them tend to get fixed quickly:
- Your Astra version and build, from Settings > About.
- Your Jellyfin server version, and whether it transcodes on a graphics card.
- The container, video codec, audio codec, and resolution of the file — Jellyfin shows all of these on the item's media info.
- Whether the same file plays on another Jellyfin client.
- Whether Astra reaches the server locally, over the internet, or through a VPN.
- Anything the Jellyfin server log says about the failed session.
Several of the fixes in recent releases exist because somebody sent a server log and a codec list instead of “it doesn't work”. Skip Credits and Next Episode arrived as a code contribution from a user. This is a small project and reports are the reason it improves.
You can also email [email protected] if GitHub is not your thing.