At least it (hopefully) means no more stupid "cracked fire TV sticks" on the local market. The end-user-support experience is downright awful and I'm sick of having to explain to people I can't help with them.
The main reason, at least around the people I know, people buy Fire Sticks is to watch football/soccer at 3pm on a Saturday (there's a UK wide blackout to encourage fans to go to their local game, albeit if you're a fan of a club far away or a Premier League team you're going to struggle to get there, games are still aired abroad, IPTV services skirt round this) and to save money on multiple media subscriptions (IYKYK).
I can only imagine after this change people will stop buying them as they're close to useless as people have Smart TVs for the legal stuff.
(And Walmart already has started doing regionlocking to try to crack down on that, too! Taking an ONN box out of the US will error out in setup and complain it's only for sale in US/PR.)
Might be worth getting a male to female HDMI extension cable to make it easier to plug in.
The content may vary between regions though, e.g., you open Netflix in another country and no longer see a show you’re watching while see other ones appear. This can sometimes feel like a feature more than a bug.
This works at a lot of chain hotels. Not every hotel, but a lot of them. In the UK this works in most Premier Inns and Travelodges, doesn't work in Point A hotels from experience.
Alternatively ask for two or more cards at the desk.
If the room is cleaned daily the cleaners have a tendency to remove them though. The chain hotels only tend to clean if you ask though, or on a certain few days after check-in.
Helps if you want to keep the air con on or devices powered up.
I don't know if by "people" you mean specifically the people who use them for illegal streams, but there are others of us who buy them.
I have a perfectly good high-end LG OLED TV that's now ~7-8 years old, and I wanted something with better performance (and newer WiFi standards) for streaming apps in 4K, I've used a couple of different boxes/dongles in that time and am currently using a Firestick 4K Max, it sort of does the job but of course it's advert-ridden and has AV sync issues, overall performance is ok, but the Prime Video app is still appallingly slow, Netflix runs great, Disney is ok, and the others are a variety of acceptable to poor.
The idea is that this encourages people to go to their local football team instead of watching the game on TV.
For a small island, there are massive amount of football teams. If you're American you're probably only familiar with the 'Premier League' with teams like Manchester United/City, Arsenal, Chelsea etc. and maybe the Scottish Premier League with Celtic and Rangers, and maybe Championship thanks to 'Welcome to Wrexham' but there are leagues and leagues below, it goes very deep until you get to teams literally just playing on a bit of grass behind a church in a small village and the local gym teacher being the referee.
The blackout is supposed to mean you go to whatever team is nearest or easiest to get to for you, going to big team Premier League games is very expensive if not impossible unless you have silly money to spend or wait years (I mean like 10+ years for a season ticket).
But it doesn't really work for a lot of people. If you moved away for university etc. you might still want to watch your team but the only local team is your team's rival. Or you would end up watching the village football team game.
Most games are aired abroad for expats and foreign fans, but UK residents are unable to watch those legally, hence the growth in fire sticks.
I'm British, but having never been into football (or any sport really) I wasn't aware of this TV blackout; given what I do know of people who don't necessarily support the local team, this sounds like madness, also how does this work for away games? I know loads of people who live/work in London now who still support their home town team.
So, to make sure I understand this correctly; if I wanted to watch a particular team, say my local one, without going to the game, there is no actual legit way to watch that match from home?
I suspect your London friends are using VPNs and/or illegal streams, or simply just following scores or watching watchalongs, Soccer Saturday etc.
Games outwith the Saturday blackout can be watched legally, bigger teams usually on TV or via club streaming services. Games are often scheduled at lunchtime and after 6pm to allow them to be aired on TV on Saturday.
I've certainly got something to talk about next time I see some of my football fan friends, and I'll have to ask what they do to watch the games, I'm not aware of any of them actually going to the matches when I've known the local (Premier League) team to be playing.
Outside the blackout games are on TV as per usual.
Some 3pm games have started to air on trial.