Amazon Fire TV Cube Media Player

Amazon Fire TV Cube Media Player

Alexa is always listening. Always.

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what does this do that the $25 fire stick I just bought won’t?

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she knows if you’ve been sleeping
she knows if your awake…
she knows if you’ve been good or bad …
so …watch out…

It’s better than the Firestick in my opinion (even the new Firestick with the better processor). It has better wifi reception, if you plan on integrating it with either a sound bar or a receiver for system control, it works better than pairing the dot with the Firestick to try and get the same results. The cube can use either HDMI-cec control or it also has IR blasting to control other items like cable box/receiver/TV. I own both the new Firestick that I paired with a dot, and I own a couple of cubes. I like the cubes better, despite using an older processor, they aren’t really any slower. From my experience they seem more stable also. The new Firestick gets a little flakey sometimes. Neither one is perfect, and they are both too Amazoncentric when it comes to content on the device, but overall the both work pretty well. I was able to ditch cable, go to Hulu live TV streaming ($40/month) and save about $80/month and not have to deal with cable boxes or cable cards anymore. The cube is sort of like a harmony remote you can talk to. I can say Alexa tune to ABC, it will turn on my TV, turn on my receiver (it will make sure the receiver and TV are both on the correct inputs) then it will go to Hulu and tune to ABC. For $60 it’s a nice deal, for a functional device.

The one unfortunate thing I noticed is that this one may lack the newer remote with the volume control built in. If you get your device and find it does not have one of the newer remotes, you can either order a newer remote for like $30 All-new Alexa Voice Remote with power and volume controls Kind of pricey though, but one day they did a special and allowed me to but 1 at $15. Another option that I used that worked pretty well was to buy this add-on remote for $17 that slips over a portion of the Alexa remote and has learning IR buttons MYRIANN Universal Remote Attachment Amazon Fire TV. That’s a bit cheaper gadget that works pretty well, and you have the option to program more IR functions into it. There is certain functionality that is easier and quicker to use a remote vs voice commands and volume control is one of them.

I like the sideclick add on, but it is also $30

Can this be paired with an echo dot? How would it work together?

This has Echo functionality built in, responds to voice command.

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I replaced a Firestick with this (and paid full price - now it’s half price somewhere every day of the week…)

The Firestick was more flaky and had to be restarted weekly. The Fire Cube has been going for six months and I’ve only had to restart it twice. Obviously, you can talk to it (“TV on”, “Play CBS News”, “Play the latest SNL on Hulu”, etc.)

There are other minor differences, but that’s about it.

Yup, if this had the new remote, I would be in. As for now, I have a Roku enabled TV and a Firestick on the other. I’m sure that refurb boxes with the new remote will be available down the line.

I picked one of these up from the mother ship on black Friday to replace my Roku. So far I’m very impressed.
If you do buy this and want/need volume control (yes it is nice) you can always get the Amazon made Fire TV app (it is free) for your phone which has volume control and a keyboard for typing searches that you can not use voice control for.

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The volume control wouldn’t be a deal break for me. We have a Harmony Hub that controls our system and have it linked in with our echo dot. Telling the dot to turn up the volume on the TV made it go buck wild and we all almost went deaf. The same for turning down the volume. We figured out we could specify how much to change the volume.

“Turn up the volume by 2”.

“Turn down the volume by 4.”

That changed everything and now I don’t get as frustrated when my remote goes missing (darn kids/wife!).

I would hope that this would be able to do the same. I’m not sure I’m ready to jump in on this though since I think I have my system figured out and don’t have a 4K TV yet. I’ll be keeping an eye on this for the future.

I do have a question about the IR blaster. I mentioned above I have a Harmony Hub. My TV is mounted to the wall above a TV stand with shelves that house my Blu-Ray and Sound System. Nothing is on the top of the TV stand that needs IR and the top overhangs the shelves by a few inches. The living room is filled with furniture and soft surfaces (aka kids toys and the like).

I originally tried the hub in with my Blu-Ray and Sound System but couldn’t get the TV to work. If I put the hub on top of the TV Stand, only the TV would turn on. I ended up putting it on the opposite side of the room by the chairs, facing the entire entertainment system. Seems to give me the best results.

This has to be plugged into the TV to be able to output to the TV, right? Would this be feasible with my setup? Or would I have to figure out how to position everything with the additional IR blaster to catch all my stuff?

I purchased one of these for my father at full price a bit ago. He is physically disabled and a certified dumbass when comes to technology.

First of all, this does, functionally, take the place of a regular Echo for a lot of things. He uses it for time and temp and the like, which all come from the (crappy) speaker on the Cube itself. The only thing he used to use the old Echo for that this doesn’t do is play music through the integrated speaker - it instead assumes you want to listen to music through the TV.

The voice controls for the TV are the main reason why I got this for him - his hands can’t work the remote anymore. This has worked better than I ever expected for TV and Cable Box controls. Setup was easy for me, as it somehow recognized the TV model on its own and was able to tie into Cox Cable’s hardware and channel/program listings. He can (and does) say “Watch Fox News” and it changes to the correct channel. It even picks the HD version whenever there is one, which I thought was pretty cool. It also does a little trick where it’ll mute the TV if it’s having trouble hearing you. That’s great for my dad who’s hard of hearing and has a weak voice.

My only knock is that the voice recognition isn’t nearly up to the level of the Google products I use. I snickered a little when I saw how often it gets a request from him wrong “play channel ten fifty-three” often triggers playing the interactive Jeopardy game on Echo. It does that to me, too, and my voice is loud and clear.

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MTN3Pitt - some TV functions work through HDMI, like input switching, but if you need IR to hit the TV and to hit your media boxes, you’ll need a splitter and a second IR blaster. I wonder if you could use a standard headphone splitter . . .

Also, on volume up-down, you can set the increments and override those. So my Dad’s default is set for 5 units when you just “volume up,” but he can say “volume up 1” and it will comply.

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OMG, so ^ this. I bought one when they were new and expensive mostly for this reason. I do gravitate towards the remote more often, but when I want to watch TV and the kids have absconded with the remote, just barking at Alexa to get my Firefly on is magical.

Also, it has juicier specs so you can feel the snappiness of the UI and everything in general. Plus if you have a nice soundbar and such, your TV can become your music device and it’ll turn on and play stuff when you want it - like plugging a Dot/Echo into a stereo but if you already have a TV with soundbar it is much easier/minimal.

One trick for folks though. There’s a setting that makes Alexa favor this device when you speak in the room, which was bothering the hell out of me because my kitchen is close to my loungeroom, so if you have multiple Echoes, turn that setting off or set the wake word differently else the TV will CONSTANTLY pick up timers and other things when you want the other Echo to work. I only found that setting last night, but it was driving me nuts for months. Yeah, I’m not too bright.

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FWIW, I bought one of these during Black Friday for the same price, and mine came with a remote that had volume control on it.

I like it way better that the stick.

Editing to add: It does a much better job at controlling regular cable box/tv functions than other things I would have thought should handle it better (Xbox One).

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Hi. Does anyone knows if the Alexa voice controls in the Cube work in a language other than English (Spanish, in particular)? I know that the most recent Echos understand Spanish. Thank you for your feedback.

My google-fu found this article from July that says English only:

I didn’t find any evidence of an update to that.

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OK, so I bit, even with the old remote - less than a week later it comes up on Amazon $69, brand new, with the new remote and a full year warranty.

Really?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0791T9CV7/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

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