What Channels Do You Get With Amazon Fire Tv
Amazon's Fire TV media streamers have offered the Alexa voice assistant, voice search, and voice commands for a few years now. All you have to do is press the button on the remote and speak into the pinhole microphone to control Fire TV with your voice. If you have an Echo, an Echo Dot, or another Amazon device that lets you use Alexa with a wake-up word, you can pair it with a Fire TV to control your streaming media experience by voice. Or you can get a $119.99 Amazon Fire TV Cube and enjoy all of the features of the Fire TV/Echo combination, including hands-free control of your home theater, in one package.
The Fire TV Cube has a far-field microphone array that can pick up your voice and activate Alexa with a wake word instead of through a button press and a single mic on a remote. It's certainly more expensive than the Fire TV Stick 4K, but the addition of hands-free Alexa commands makes it an excellent media streamer for anyone who doesn't already own Fire TV and Echo devices, and earns it our Editors' Choice.
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Fire TV Cube Design and Remote
The Fire TV Cube is a near-cube that measures 3.0 by 3.4 by 3.4 inches (HWD), with sharp 90-degree edges between each side. The sides of the Cube are glossy black plastic, with the top panel a less shiny matte black. The front face features an etched Amazon logo and a translucent bar on the top edge that lights up blue when Alexa is listening. The top panel has eight pinholes for the far-field microphone array, along with four buttons typical of most Echo devices: Volume Up/Down, Microphone Mute, and Alexa (for manually activating voice control without using the wake word). The Cube sits on four very shallow rubber feet, lifting the device up just slightly so the downward-firing speaker on the bottom can be heard.
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The back of the Cube holds a connector for the power adapter, a 3.5mm jack for the included infrared blaster, an HDMI output, and a micro USB port for service. No Ethernet port is present on the device. Instead, you can plug the included Ethernet adapter into the micro USB port if you want to use a wired connection instead of the Cube's dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi. The adapter is a bit puzzling, since the Cube has plenty of space for a port on the back.
The included remote is the new, updated Alexa Voice remote included with newer Fire TV Stick models. It's a simple, narrow, 6-inch-long black plastic wand with a glossy circular navigation pad flanked by a microphone button and power button above, and six menu and playback control buttons below. A volume rocker and mute button sit below the playback controls, letting you control your TV's volume thanks to the remote's infrared emitter. A pinhole microphone above the mic button lets you use Alexa through the remote instead of the Cube's microphone, without a wake word. The remote connects to the Cube over Bluetooth, so you don't need a line of sight with it except to directly control your TV.
Setting Up the Cube
Getting started is very easy, especially if you already have an Amazon account (Amazon Prime isn't necessary, but it will provide access to Prime Video and Prime Music). Plug the Cube in and connect it to your TV. Press the Play/Pause button on the remote to activate it and put the Cube in setup mode. The on-screen instructions will walk you through connecting to your Wi-Fi network, then signing in with your Amazon account (or making a new one if you don't already have one).
After you're signed in, you can select additional apps and services for specific purposes, like live TV (including Hulu, Sling TV, and PlayStation Vue), premium channels (like HBO and Showtime), and sports (like ESPN). After that, the Cube will attempt to automatically identify your TV through the HDMI connection, then test its remote control commands by turning it off and on again. If that works, like it did when connected to an LG OLED55E8PUA in testing, the Cube will then be able to turn your TV on and off, adjust its volume, and switch inputs with voice commands.
The Cube can control multiple home theater devices at once, thanks to HDMI-CEC, networked controls, and infrared blasters. The Cube itself has IR emitters on all of its sides, and the included additional IR blaster can be placed near devices inside a cabinet or otherwise outside of the Cube's infrared range. If your home theater setup changes after the Cube is configured, you can use the Equipment Control menu to add new devices to the Cube's command list, tweak individual devices' commands, or go through the equipment setup process again to start from scratch.
Fire TV Features
Once everything is set up, the Cube looks and acts just like a Fire TV, with the notable addition of hands-free voice control. You can treat it like an Echo device, waking it up by saying "Alexa" and talking to it without touching the remote. The microphone array on the Cube is powerful enough to pick up your words from across a large living room. Since the Cube will likely be placed near a TV or soundbar connected to a TV, Amazon says it improved microphone sensitivity over other Echo devices to better hear your voice when audio is coming through the TV or connected speakers. It still recommends placing the Cube at least a foot or two away from any active speakers in your home theater setup, including the TV itself.
The Fire TV Cube has largely the same hardware as the Fire TV, but with 16GB of storage for apps compared with the Fire TV and Fire TV Stick's 8GB. The Cube supports all of the apps and services of the Fire TV. That includes Amazon's own streaming services like Prime Video, Prime Music, and Amazon Music, plus most major third-party video services like Crunchyroll, Hulu, Netflix, PlayStation Vue, Sling TV, and Twitch. Google's apps are notably absent, though, so you can't access Google Play Movies & TV or Google Play Music, and YouTube is accessed through the Cube's pre-installed Silk and Firefox web browsers (though the YouTube experience on these browsers is nearly identical to the YouTube app on Android TV, and supports voice search and controls).
Several music services are also available, including Pandora, Spotify, and Tidal. And, as already mentioned, the Cube features two fully functional web browsers, Firefox and Silk, that are fairly intuitive to use with the navigation pad on the remote controlling the on-screen pointer, despite the lack of a touchpad or air mouse function for more computer-like control. It's a powerful smart TV platform with plenty of apps and services, despite a few frustrating omissions on Google's side.
The Cube also has all of the media playback capabilities as the Fire TV, outputting at 4K and supporting high dynamic range (HDR) in HDR10 format. Dolby Vision is not supported, though the newer Fire TV Stick 4K can stream Dolby Vision content.
Hands-Free Alexa
The voice controls here are powerful and functional, which is to be expected considering how long Amazon has been improving its Alexa voice assistant. All of the standard Alexa features with visual support are available, just as if you were using a screen-equipped Echo Spot, Echo Show, or an Echo speaker/Fire TV combination. You can get broad trivia (celebrity information, unit conversion, zip codes for cities, and more), weather reports, sports scores and schedules, and other information from Alexa, with responses provided audibly through the Cube's speaker and visually on the TV. If the TV is turned off, Alexa will answer you only with voice. It isn't as powerful as the standard Echo, since Amazon assumes you'll mostly be using it with your TV and its speakers (or an attached soundbar), but it's louder than the Echo Dot.
Alexa's smart home controls are intact, letting you adjust any smart lights, thermostat, or other compatible home automation device with your voice. If you have an Amazon Cloud Cam or another compatible home security camera or video doorbell, you can get a live visual feed on your TV simply by asking for it. On top of all of this, the Cube can control your TV and many connected home theater devices through Alexa, as well. I had no problem telling Alexa to turn the connected TV on or off, adjust the volume, and change inputs. If you have a set-top box for cable or satellite service, or a Blu-ray player, it can control that, too.
The voice controls extend to the Cube's own navigation and Fire TV features, as well. You can voice search for movies and TV shows by title, genre, actor, and other information, and get results based on your currently installed and registered streaming services. You'll see suggestions from Amazon Prime Video, but also Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Channels and other premium channels with their own separate apps like HBO and Showtime, and other services. Search results are displayed as numbered tiles, and you can select different items by title or number, or flip between different pages and screens with voice commands.
Most apps that aggregate search results with Fire TV on the Cube let you directly load content with your voice, jumping immediately into playing the movie, TV show, or song you want in the app without going through the app's menu system first (assuming you've already signed in on the app previously). Many also feature in-app voice controls, letting you play and pause video with your voice.
Fire TV Cube Performance
Voice commands worked quite well on the Cube in testing, even with my voice going up against the TV audio. I could use Alexa easily, loading live TV and on-demand video through Amazon, Hulu, and YouTube. Voice commands let me pause and resume video, mute and unmute the TV, raise and lower the volume, and even enable and disable subtitles while I watched, all completely hands-free.
Searching for unusual names is hit or miss, generally defaulting to more common terms (like bringing up Clubs when I asked to see MrClemps' videos on YouTube), but that's typical for voice search. Alexa was generally good at keeping track of what I was doing in the context of my voice commands, though the voice assistant became confused when I asked to watch SyFy on Hulu. The Cube first showed me results for the sci-fi genre in the app, then directing me to download the separate SyFy app, before finally switching to the channel when I specifically said, "Alexa, tune to SyFy on Hulu." Again, these are quirks that are pretty normal for voice assistants, though we also see Alexa as a bit less flexible than Google Assistant when dealing with natural language versus formal voice command syntax.
While voice commands are functional, they aren't ideal for everything. Amazon recognizes this, which is why a conventional remote is included. I split my use of the Fire TV Cube roughly equally between voice commands and the remote. Broad playback controls, volume adjustments, and loading apps, channels, and shows with your voice is quick and easy, letting you ignore the remote most of the time for those functions. Browsing content and navigating menus is faster and more convenient using the remote.
Outside of voice controls, the Fire TV Cube worked very well navigating menus, loading apps, and playing video. 4K HDR video loaded over Netflix quickly with a Wi-Fi connection, as did 1080p live TV channels on Hulu. Jumping between the different apps and the Fire TV menu felt snappy and responsive.
An Ideal Fire TV/Echo Amalgam
The Amazon Fire TV Cube is the best iteration of the Fire TV yet. For $120, it offers all the functionality of both an Amazon Fire TV and an Echo speaker, letting you control your home theater, smart home devices, and the media hub itself with your voice. It's a pretty big premium over the $70 Fire TV, but if you don't already have an Echo device to enable hands-free voice control with a Fire TV, that premium is absolutely worthwhile. For all of its functionality and convenience, the Amazon Fire TV Cube earns our Editors' Choice for media streaming devices.
If you don't want hands-free Alexa, or if you already have an Echo device, the Fire TV Stick and Fire TV Stick 4K are both very capable streaming media devices. You can also get the Roku Premiere+, which is less expensive than the Fire TV and has a more robust app selection with Google Play support, but has far less voice control functionality.
Amazon Fire TV Cube
Cons
The Bottom Line
The Amazon Fire TV Cube combines the best features of the Fire TV with the hands-free voice control and Alexa capabilities of the Echo, in a single media streamer.
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What Channels Do You Get With Amazon Fire Tv
Source: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/amazon-fire-tv-cube