#HOW TO USE FIRESTICK NEW MOVIES HOW TO#
RELATED: How to Set Up and Configure Your Amazon Echo “All Jazz” courtesy of Prime Music, with some nice cover art to go with it, will start playing and be presented in an information card. Let’s try another simple command to dip into our Prime music collection: “Play some jazz music.” Hit the back button on the remote to return to the main screen. Make a weather request like: “What’s the weather like in Beverly Hills?”Īlmost instantly–the Alexa system is really fast–you’ll get audio feedback and a nice looking pop-over information card with the forecast. Press and hold the microphone button and begin speaking (you’ll see the “Listening…” microphone indicator pop up on the screen). Let’s start off with a simple natural language command. Press and hold the microphone button on your voice remote.
#HOW TO USE FIRESTICK NEW MOVIES TV#
To summon Alexa, let’s start from the main Fire TV menu. Let’s take a look at how to trigger Alexa with the voice remote and then how to customize your Alexa experience. If you’ve recently purchased your Fire TV or updated to Fire OS 5 or above, Alexa integration is automatically turned on–though if you haven’t used one of Alexa’s specific triggers you may not have realized it. NOTE: From this point forward we’ll refer to both devices simply as the “Fire TV” for the sake of brevity. Even though Amazon has a Fire TV remote for Android, iOS, and their mobile Fire devices, the remote’s voice functionality is limited to the original Fire TV voice search and, inexplicably, does not support Alexa.įinally, if you want to take advantage of Prime streaming music or voice-based ordering you’ll need an Amazon Prime account–Prime is not necessary for other functions like news, sports scores, weather, etc. The remote, unfortunately, is a non-optional component. With that in mind if you need a voice remote it might be worth just getting another Fire TV bundle. As of this article you can pick up a voice remote for $30, but the difference between getting a whole Fire TV Stick package with the standard remote ($35) and with the voice remote ($45) is only ten bucks. While the Fire TV has always shipped with a voice remote, the first generation of the Fire TV Stick did not. You can check your Fire TV version number by navigating to Settings > System > About on your Fire TV. Support for the older Fire TV units is a relatively new (and welcome) change–now anyone with a Fire TV can use Alexa. A first generation Fire TV Stick or above, updated to Fire OS 5 with the optional voice remote.A first generation Fire TV or above, updated to Fire OS 5 or above with the included voice remote.To enjoy Alexa on your Fire TV you, at the minimum need the following things:
If all this sounds like a Fire TV feature you’re on board with taking advantage of, let’s take a look at what you need and how to use it. While the Echo is limited to giving you audio feedback (and sending additional information to the companion mobile Alexa app), the Fire TV implementation of Alexa has really polished on-screen cards–as seen in the screenshot collection above. One might easily argue, even, that despite the hassle of pressing the button and needing to have the television attached to the Fire TV on during operation, that the on-screen displays more than make up for the inconvenience. You can ask about the weather, call up Prime streaming music, add items to your shopping list, check the news, see how your favorite team is doing, and more. That small inconvenience aside, you can still do all the great things with Alexa on the Fire TV that you can do with the Echo. The functionality on the Fire TV platform is identical to the functionality on the the Echo platform save for one minor difference: while the Echo has an always-on microphone to take your requests without physical interaction with the device, the Fire TV requires you to press the microphone button on the remote to trigger the Alexa system. RELATED: HTG Reviews the Amazon Fire TV: Beefy Hardware Primed for the Amazon Ecosystemīut after the release of the Amazon Echo and its powerful voice assistant Alexa, Amazon eventually got around to rolling out Alexa support to the Fire TV.
Although the voice search worked well for your Amazon stuff, it wasn’t particularly useful beyond pulling up TV shows and the like.
When it was first released, the Fire TV shipped with some basic voice control built right in–you could search for shows, movies, apps, and other media within the Amazon ecosystem. This isn’t your standard voice control, either–it’s much more.