Help with recorded TV buffer on FireTV Stick 4K

Is there any way to increase the buffer on my FireTV stick 4k so I can skip ahead 2-3 minutes or so? I usually do this by clicking skip 8-12 times on my remote. However, often, but not every time, the stream hangs for up to 10 -20 seconds sometimes making the skip forward not exactly ideal. (These are the settings I am used to using Windows Media extenders all of these years)

I just purchased this OTG ethernet adapter (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B078MNW25Q?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title)
to try to fix all this but it didn't seem to help. The faster internet speed I'm sure is helpful but I've read somewhere in these forums that it's more dependent on a storage issue on my firestick, and no matter what I do, I can't get the firestick to recognize a usb stick i plugged into it.

Has anyone else achieved this using a similar setup and how did you do it?

Thanks everyone!
Seth

I think most people on the forum will agree that to get the snappiest performance from DVR to client is to use Gigabit ethernet everywhere you can. That's what I've done in my house - server w/ Gigabit Ethernet LAN port to Gigabit router to one of these guys on the firestick -> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07N2ZHFY9/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Also, make sure your external harddrive is USB3.0. I also got a pretty good boost when I went to SSD (rather than spinning disk) for storing my recordings.

What does the Settings > Support > Speed Test option in the app show?

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I think the Channels app on Firestick has to be moved to usb drive. Any app data needs to be stored in same location as the app. This is controlled by the developers. The Usb drive has to be formatted as "internal" storage. The firestick should offer that ability. There are lots of Youtube videos on expanding storage on the 4K firestick.

Is that true? I was reading about moving apps to the usb drive. Wouldn't that hurt the speed of the app? I was imagining having to move every 'other' app that I can to move to the usb drive to free up as much space in the built in memory of the firestick as possible. I could be completely wrong though, I hope I am! Right now I'm waiting on the delivery of a usb 3.0 drive as icouldn't get any of the usb drives i had laying around to work. I have no idea if they are usb 2.0 or 3.0

As far as I know, the FTV4K doesn't implement support for USB devices in their interface. You need to be prepared to set it up via adb.

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I found a video on YouTube that shows me how to mount the usb drive using adb and you can view its contents using ES Explorer, it worked but I stopped there, because I'm not really sure what to do next. Getting closer....!

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Yeah to add storage on a FireStick is not as easy as it looks ... on the FireTV Cube you simply format as Internal storage.... you cannot just do that on the FireStick.

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I think I read that the new FireStick models run Fire OS 7 and can easily add additional storage. The FireStick 4K still runs Fire OS 6 without the support.

I have a FS Lite & was pretty simple. Because I wanted to split the USB between internal & external, I did use Remote ADB following instructions for the 4K. This guy does a good job explaining the process https://troypoint.com/radb

Thanks @Phil1 that was helpful. I was able to follow the tutorial and now I have Channels installed on my USB drive. I also moved as many other apps as I could, I now have 1.81GB of 5.28 GB available. So far so good, it's working real well at the moment! I'll update this post or reply again if I notice more issues.
@tmm1 to answer your question from earlier, I have 95MB down and 98MB up speeds on my FireTV stick 4K using an ethernet cable with all gigabit switches throughout my house.

95MB.. so I guess it's USB2 100mbps adapter? That explains some of the slowness as gigabit would be 10x faster. You might even seen better performance over Wi-Fi.

I noticed yesterday that if I used wifi for BOTH the Channels server and client (Firestick 4K) it would buffer using FF. Simply adding a LAN cable from router to server fixed the issue. I am still going wifi from stick to router and everything is great.

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Does having channels on the USB on the Firestick give you a larger pause buffer now? The only thing my wife doesn't like is the short ~10 minute pause buffer with HDHR channels. If I can raise that to 30 minutes or more it will be awesome.

I don't think the firestick supports usb format as internal storage. This works great on the new Google chromecast tv and the ts4k. 16gb usb stick increases the buffer size to about 3hrs.

Yes it does.

It does, but not from the device's menu. You have manually do it via adb.

So If I do it via ADB, will the pause buffer be longer?

Assuming you properly used the sm partition command via the ADB shell, and moved the Channels DVR app to the USB drive, then yes.

I am now using the 2020 FireTV Stick Lite with 2.45GB of 5.35GB available. I have a 32GB usb drive plugged in using an OTG Ethernet Adapter. My live tv buffer lasted 30 minutes. Hope this helps

I can confirm it works on a FS 4K. The instructions are clear and easy to perform. The above link takes you to the APK. But just google "troypoint remote adb shell" and you will get the instructions. I installed channels on a clean firestick after I installed the external memory and set it up. Channels loaded on the USB drive so I did not have to move it and it just worked. Thanks!