Sheri and I own two Amazon Fire TV Sticks. We have one for the kitchen/work area and one for the bedroom. We DON’T lay in bed watching TV folks, but we do have a sitting area in our bedroom and will retire to the bedroom to watch TV.
Sheri and I do NOT pay for cable TV.
I’ve written articles on not paying for TV:
RV ing the light and Spartan way – Cutting the ties to Cable TV
RV ing lite – Things you really NEED in an RV for a good experience
RV Entertainment System Overview with Sonos Play and Bridge
Amazon Prime – Free for 30 days
I have others, but you’ll see the idea of NOT paying for cable TV is woven into the fabric of how we live our lives.
When we started subscribing to Amazon Prime, we realized that we could get all this media from Amazon as part of our Amazon Prime subscription. We also found the BEST way to get this media was on the TV via these products call Amazon Fire TV devices. They have a big box and a stick. We opted for the sticks since it allows less “gunk” in and around the TV.
We also have a smart TV which gets Amazon Prime media, but the experience is not as good as the stick.
I won’t regale with all of the features, but I thought I would list a few things that we like, a few things we have done, and give you some ideas about the stick that you might find interesting.
- The sticks remember where you left off, even if you change sticks, rooms, or wait a few days to continue to watch something.
- The sticks can get LOTS of other things on them that aren’t Amazon – like ESPN for example.
- One of my sticks in the house has a bug or something and I have been able to watch ESPN for free – super cool. That doesn’t work on my other sticks, my TVs or my computers. Yay me. Probably won’t work for you either. Hope it holds for the upcoming year.
- I’m able to watch Apple iTunes content – see this article on how to do it – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds_ez9uAi-8
- My wife has powerwatched: Blue Bloods (pretty good show), The Good Wife, Bosch, Suits, and about 10 other shows. We don’t pay for the current year or any year that isn’t free. We can wait.
- We’ll tune in Youtube and watch some Ted Talks.
- Sometimes we’ll take the stick with us on trips. It is so easy to unplug.
- You can’t power the stick from the TV USB port. It just doesn’t seem to work well.
- This is cool – The remote for the Amazon stick uses a radio – it doesn’t require line of sight like most remotes. This is very, very nice.
- We do not use the voice remote. We have it. We just don’t use it. I have no feedback for RV52 users on the voice remote.