Fire TV Stick

I bought a Fire TV Stick. Despite the adverts featuring one Jeremy Clarkson (if Amazon could stop marketing towards centrist dads that’d be amazing).

Why though? Well we’ve been using the Xbox One as the media center/hub/platform for ages now. I bought the Xbone with my first real pay cheque back in 2015 but I’ve not played games on it for months! I don’t have the time to play games on it and any time I do have would be better spent painting Warhammer[0].

I wanted something that would meet the following criteria:

  1. Be small
  2. Connect to the TV
  3. Stream all the UK TV on demand services
  4. Netflix
  5. Amazon Prime Video

That encompasses everything we did with the Xbone. We didn’t watch YouTube through it and we wanted stuff from Amazon so the Chromecast we also had dangling wasn’t much use. I don’t want to be involved in the pissing match between Google and Amazon.

The solutions are:

  1. Apple TV
  2. Fire TV Stick
  3. Build your own thing

Building my own thing would end up being far larger than a Fire TV Stick and far more effort and on going work. Buying an Apple TV would cost more than the Xbone could be sold for. So I ordered the Stick.

It arrived really fast and with my account already connected. I can see why that might be an issue for some people but it was nice for me. I then installed all the apps and logged into every account under the sun. The 21st century is a nightmare where every piece of content requires a different set of keys.

The device is very snappy, wakes up very fast and all the content loads quickly. Logging into services was a real pain. There’s the system keyboard which some apps use but most seem to reinvent the keyboard every time which is super naff. Not having a physical keyboard means typing in your strong passwords is a huuuuuuuge pain.

Since then I’ve had no issues with the thing. The UI design is equally as shit and advert filled as the Xbone but switching between apps is faster and we’ve got more space under the TV now.

It’s got Alexa in it, but I’ve not managed to get it to do a single thing I intended yet. Vastly inferior to Google Assistant.

So yeah, I sold the Xbone which means I’m net up on the deal (if you ignore the initial purchase of the Xbone and the subsequent devaluation of it).

[0] - “better spent”