Fire TV Archives | Zatz Not Funny!

AFTVnews Goes Dark (for a good reason!)

AFTVnews, the preeminent site for everything Fire TV, is going dormant. At first blush, it appears to be a tremendous loss for us Fire TV owners. However, proprietor Elias Saba has been hired by Amazon and will be well-positioned within the Fire TV team to represent consumers. And it’s a fascinating story arc as Elias … Read more

How To Download Amazon Recast DVR Recordings

The Amazon Fire TV Recast DVR may not be much to look at, yet the new entrant appears somewhat hackable as AFTVNews has just documented how to offload recordings. Of course, there are tons of reasons why you might want to do this — such as overcoming Amazon ecosystem lock-in, facilitate offline viewing, or to allow … Read more

Amazon Fire TV Recast DVR Is Humongous (and not very good)

I finally took possession of an Amazon Fire TV Recast DVR… and, boy, is it is massive. I assume Amazon went with off-the-shelf components to get to market quickly and, should they find success in this space, invest more resources in a smarter, custom design for v2… much as they did in utilizing the Blackberry … Read more

Hacking Amazon Fire TV Recast DVR

Now that Amazon’s surprise over-the-air Fire TV Recast DVR has been out a few weeks, we’ve begun to learn more about its capabilities. While it’s not the right solution for me, as I run mixed streamer household, it seems like a great value with tons of potential. And, as such, AFTVNews has begun hacking the … Read more

Recast DVR: Digital Media Developer Weighs In

Long-time digital media developer Jon Maddox, who you may know as half the team behind the stellar Channels app and DVR software that maximizes HDHomeRun network tuner hardware, weighs in on the Amazon Fire TV Recast DVR competition: Picture quality on this thing is…not great. It looks like maybe it's progressive and starts bad and … Read more

Amazon Fire TV Update Closes Gap On Roku

Folks routinely ask for streaming box recommendations. And, for a few years, I took the position that Roku and Fire TV were largely equivalent and indicated the decision should come down to content and app preferences. Need Kodi? Amazon is the answer. YouTube? Roku. Etc. However, the math changed last fall when Roku refreshed its lineup with smartly integrated volume-control capabilities. For many with streamlined configurations, a Harmony is unnecessary or overly complex (with additional clutter) — whereas simply adding some CEC and IR control to an expensive streamer may be exactly what the doctor ordered for increased efficiency. Well, today, Amazon ups the ante with similar from the $50 4K Amazon Fire TV Stick… and then some.

Amazon Fire TV Cube Reviews

Amazon Fire TV Cube has arrived … and the reviews are in! The streamer essentially mates an Amazon Fire TV with an Echo Dot and some Logitech Harmony-esque IR blasting capabilities. When first announced, I was enticed (especially given the introductory pricing) – but Amazon’s increasingly cluttered presentation and conspicuously missing volume buttons gave me pause. Not to mention, I’m currently down on always-listening voice assistants — whereas the more economical, yet sufficiently powerful, Amazon Fire TV ships with a perfectly suitable Alexa-powered, push-to-talk voice remote. But let’s see what folks who’ve actually put the hardware through its paces have to say:

The Verge: Alexa turns out to be a good match for your living room

The speaker is not as powerful as a standard Echo, but it’s not designed for playing music — the Cube will route any music requests to your TV’s speakers or your soundbar. Most of the time, Alexa’s responses will also route through the TV’s speakers, but it will use the Cube’s speaker if the TV is off or set to another input. […] And in my experience of testing the Fire TV Cube over the past few days, its Alexa-based voice control system works more often than it doesn’t. But I’m not throwing my remotes in the garbage just yet.

Best Buy Drops Roku In Favor Of Fire TV Insignia Televisions

While Best Buy often functions as an uncompensated showroom for online sales, given massive Alexa and Fire TV displays, the big box store is clearly a valued Amazon retailer. As such, the two companies have announced a significant partnership expansion that sees Best Buy replacing Roku on Insignia house-brand sets with the Fire TV experience. Also, interestingly, Best Buy will not only sell these televisions in-store but optionally through Amazon.com for the first time.

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