Amazon released two price drops for Fire TV Stick and Echo Dot. The Fire TV Stick is available for $34.99 which is $5 off.
The Echo Tap is now only $99.99 which is $30 off regular price.
These prices are good until Sept 10 throughout labor day.
Can you get local channels such as CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, CW (CBS+Warner Bros.), or Telemundo? These are channels that are widely available by using an over the air antenna for free. In some areas, these channels are not available unless you have a high power over the air antenna. This poses a problem for say people who live in apartments where installing a high power antenna on the roof is not possible. The only means to get access to these channels are through paid subscription services such as cable, fiber, or satellite TV. Cable cutters would love to swap out these paid services and stream.
I tried installing a few apps from the Amazon App store from Fire TV. It was a mixed bag of what is available vs what isn’t available. One thing that was consistent was that no apps provided live content for free. If the app from a major TV network offered live content on Fire TV, it was for people with paid subscription. As for what is available, you have a mixed bag. For example, the NBC app offered dateline episodes for free but America Ninja Warrior and America’s Got Talent required a sign in from a paid subscription.
A possible alternative would be to pay for Sling TV. With Sling TV, you get a handful of popular TV networks for $20/month.
Looks like it is not possible to truly cut the cord if your residence is outside the TV signal area.
There are rumors circulating that Amazon is preparing an announcement of the 3rd gen Fire TV around end of Sept / early Oct 2016. This makes sense as it would position them to max out sales and take advantage of the Christmas gift shopping season. Fire TV is a great gift for people of all ages. On top of this, Amazon will likely drop the price for the current Fire TV stick and 2nd gen Fire TV which will fuel a buying frenzy for people who want that it for their 2nd or 3rd tv in their own room or basement.
This is what I think Amazon will do for their 3rd gen fire TV.
-Improved internal memory from 8GB to 16GB
-Faster CPU
-Better integration and options to manage Alexa
-More home automation integration
-Ability to make purchase using voice remote
What would you like to see in the 3rd Gen Fire TV?
I will explain how you can turn your TV into a digital sign using just an app and Fire TV stick. This is great when you want to turn your TV into a sign for a restaurant menu signage, instruction or floor plan, directory of an office building, daily schedule of the day at a hotel banquet all, funeral home, pictures at a dental office and more. Here is what you need.
The app is free for the first 30 days. After, you can sign up for an annual unlimited subscription of SignageCreator. With this subscription, there are over 1000+ templates which you can use to create your sign. Signagecreator have two pricing plans. Standard license is for $100/template for just one use. Unlimited usage is for $30/month.
If you want to make it vertical, you can change the setting on the TV and use the app and set it up the way you want.
Amazon’s Prime day is here and here are the best deals so far.
This is my favorite:
Amazon Echo (the lowest this has ever been!)
Regular: $179.99 but Prime Day Deal $129.99 which is 50% off!
If you have the Amazon Rewards card, you can also bring it down to $99 by using applying the discount code VISA30.
Amazon Fire TV
Regular Price: $99.99 but with Prime Day deal $69.99 which is 30% off
Fire TV Stick with voice remote
Regular: $49.99 but with Prime Day Deal $34.99
Fire TV Stick without voice remote -> Regular
REgular: $39.99 but with Prime Day deal $24.99
Bonus:
Samsung UN55KU6600 Curved 55-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV (2016 Model)
Regular: $1,247.99 but Prime Day Deal $649.99 which is 48% off
In May, Amazon enable Alexa on its Fire TV remote. This allowed Fire TV owners to use Alexa as you had an Amazon Echo. If you already have an Echo, then this would not be foreign to you.
Movies / TV
With Alexa, you can trigger it to control a movie. You can ask Alexa to play a movie, TV show. It will also search from your active add-on subscriptions as well as third party apps. You can also use it to trigger a certain app.
Examples:
Play the movie [title]
Start playing the TV show [title]
Launch the app [title]
Open the [title] app
Music
You can also trigger music you have on your Prime Music library to simply listen to one of the Prime stations. You can rate a song by saying you like it or do not like the song. This will help Alexa rate the type of song it chooses for you. You can completely skip songs or rewind but cannot fast forward or rewind or change volume. Bummer. This is possible with Echo.
Audible and eBooks
Through Alexa, you can use your Fire TV to read eligible Kindle books in your library. You can even see the title and book cover on your TV. Neat!
News Flash Briefing
One great feature I love with Alexa is that you can ask her to read you the news flash. Go into the Alexa app and select your news source. You can select national, international, local news, sports, and weather source / location. All you say is “Alexa, What’s my news flash?” or “Alexa, Whats my flash briefing?” and it will read a 5-10 min briefing of the latest news from what you selected. I use it when I sit down and enjoy my breakfast. You can also set up your commute location and it’ll give you the congestion condition!
Shopping
No surprise to anyone, you can use Alexa to buy things on Amazon. It is a bit clumsy as you need to know the exact item you are interested in buying in order to buy through Alexa. If you ask Alexa to buy something, it will select the top result for that category and display the item. It is a bit easier to re-order something if it is something you have purchased in the past such as detergent, razor blades, diapers for example.
Weather / Traffic
Asking Alexa for the weather is also another one of my favorites. My kids use this almost every day to determine if they can wear shorts for the day! I don’t use the traffic much as I don’t commute to an office 🙂
Q&A / Jokes
This is kind of an easter egg hunt. You can ask “Alexa, how are you doing today?” or “Alexa, good morning” and she will read back a quote or a comment.
Wikipedia
Alexa also has access to a database of facts. You can ask how far you are to say New York city, ask for conversion such as cooking, time zone, and more. You can ask celebrities or athlete’s age!
Lists (To do / Shopping)
Alexa can aggregate shopping list and to do list. You can use it as a personal assistant to remind you to do something and check it on your Fire TV or on your app later. You can also have Alexa read out your shopping or to do list using your remote.
There are much much more features which you can do with sports scores, movie info, local search, and some features which are voice only where nothing will display on your Fire TV. For all features, check out:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201859020
Can you watch shows like Daniel Tiger’s neighborhood?
Do you like Wild Kratts?
How about Odd Squad, Dinosaur Train, Nature Cat, and Ready Jet Go!
Well you are in luck. Amazon signed a deal with PBS Kids to be the exclusive premium subscription service on their Prime video service. This is an agreement that will span multiple years. For people with Amazon Prime membership, you will be able to watch PBS Kids on the PC through www.amazon.com/primevideos through a web browser or use the Amazon Video App. I just gave this a try and a quick search yielded 53 TV show results! Some are individual videos and some are entire season series so the actual videos are much much more.
And of course, you can watch PBS Kids through Amazon videos through Fire TV stick, Fire TV, or Fire tablets.
Erosnow, the Bollywood movie entertainment production group has signed a deal to offer its on demand service to Fire TV. Eros International is a publicly traded company on the NYSE and has been a big player in distribution and licensing of the latest Hindi, Tamil, and other Indian language movies and TV shows across Fire TV users. The huge library of films will be accessible to users across US, UK, and Western Europe.
To access the movies, navigate to the Amazon App store and install the ErosNow app. From there, you will be able to search and watch movies similar to Netflix.
I browsed a bit and you can watch popular movies such as Bajirao Masani, Piku, Kis Kisko Pyaar Karoon, Calendar Girls, Kuch Kuch Locha Hai. You can see the rest of the most popular Hindi movies here.
Amazon announced yesterday that they will offer a monthly subscription to its Prime video library for $8.99/month. Previously, you had to subscribe to its full Amazon Prime membership to reap the benefit of Amazon Prime video. Now you can subscribe to its video only services without the added on features of Prime shipping, Prime music, and other benefits. This is great for people who found the $99 annual Prime membership to be too expensive or not worth it but interested in the Amazon Prime video offerings.
Currently, you can sign up for a 30 day free trial to test drive the Amazon Prime video library.
If you tried the free trial and still not interested, you can cancel or change your Amazon Prime membership here.
Amazon also announced the option of paying for Amazon Prime membership on a monthly basis at $10.99/month. If you use it for a full year, you end up paying $131.88 which is $32.88 more.
Below is a breakdown between the different Amazon Prime subscriptions.
Amazon surprised everyone by following up to the hugely successful Amazon Echo with the Echo Dot and Echo Tap. The Echo Dot will go for $90 and Amazon is currently accepting pre-order only from current Echo owners. Although some have reported loopholes allowing you to start ordering it now but it may no longer work. The Echo Tap will go for $130.
Amazon Tap:
Amazon Tap is basically an Alexa powered bluetooth speaker with WiFi capability. There is a microphone button which will allow you to ‘Tap’ the button to ask and command Alexa the same things you did with your Echo. You need to be connected to a WiFi network or a mobile hotspot for it to work. The Tap is intended for you to carry with you outside your home. It can stream music, powered by Dolby, from Prime and other apps or music from your device.
A fully charged Tap can last up to 9 hours of continuous use and 3 week on standby.
The device will come with a cradle and as we have learned through Amazon Echo, Alexa simply continues to surprise us with new features as it matures. Recent upgrades allow you to order Dominos pizza or request an Uber from your Echo. The same will be supported via your Tap.
Amazon Dot:
The Amazon Dot looks like a squashed Echo or Tap. It also features Alexa operating system and allows you to issue voice commands to get answers or trigger an activity. The Dot is a bit less purposeful than Echo or Tap. A Dot can serve the purpose of a 2nd device in your house and avoiding the purpose of a 2nd Echo. The speakers are not intended to stream music but it does have a speaker for things like notifications such as alarms.
You may not be able to stream music directly through Dot, but it has a 35mm audio jack as well as bluetooth capability to sync with a speaker.
The Dot will be first sold in limited quantity. For now, you can only order an Echo Dot through an Alexa powered device such as Echo or Fire TV by asking Alexa, “Alexa, order an Amazon Echo Dot.”
