Amazon has added a new Audio and Video Diagnostics tool to Fire TV devices. The utility will detect the capabilities of your TV, soundbar, and/or AV receiver and report whether your current Fire TV settings are best suited for your home theater equipment’s capabilities.
The tool, found at the bottom of the Display & Sounds menu in the Fire TV’s settings, will test your TVs maximum resolution and maximum refresh rate. It also tests if it supports High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Dolby Vision HDR. On the audio side, it detects if various surround sound standards are supported, including Dolby Atmos (EC3_JOC), Dolby Digital Plus (eAC3), Dolby Digital (AC3), and PCM audio.
There is also a button to play a short sample video clip that supports the audio and video formats that the Fire TV has detected. The clip is always the same footage of a canoe white water rafting that plays on a loop, but it appears to be encoded in various formats that match the capabilities of your current equipment and settings. Amazon notes that the audio and video capabilities being detected are reliant on your equipment accurately reporting what it supports, which isn’t always the case. If, for example, you use something like an HDMI hub between the Fire TV and the home theater equipment, you may not get accurate information from this tool.
In the screenshot above, you can see that I have buggered up my Fire TV’s settings to the point that the sample video button is no longer available. At the bottom of the screen, there are now several warnings that point out all the various Fire TV settings which are hurting the quality of the audio and video playback.
This new tool seems to only be on a few Fire TV models for the time being, including the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, Fire TV Stick 4K, and 2nd-gen Fire TV Cube. I assume that this tool will make its way to other devices, but I can’t be certain. When Amazon released an audio sync tool last year, it too was only available on a limited number of models, but it did eventually trickle down to additional devices, so I expect the same will happen here.
Update
This article originally incorrectly stated that the feature was only available on the Fire TV Stick 4K Max.
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Hi, I noticed this on my gen 2 fire tv cube here in the Uk a week or so back
The version I have on the cube is 7.2.4.2 (PS7252/2896)
Thanks for letting me know! I can’t believe I missed that. I’ve been too focused on the Fire TV Stick 4K Max. I’ve updated the article to indicate that the feature is on more models.
This already existed on my stick 4k and cube gen 2
What cause my Firestick to jump channels on its own be watching NBC 402 and it will jump to 401 on its on ever few minutes
Do you know if this diagnostic tool is supposed to work when an echo studio is connected to the fire tv cube (2nd gen) via Home Theater Mode? I think the studio is supposed to deliver Atmos audio, but I get a bunch of “No’s” in this diagnostic tool. Also, the button for the test video is not displayed. The only note is the main one about how the tool can not detect all situations. I don’t have any notes on the screen about how I don’t have settings set up correctly. Thanks for any ideas!
My fire stick starts to boot up then just goes blank any ideas or is it time for a new one