Fire TV’s built-in live channel guide has been updated with improved filtering options

Posted by Elias Saba on — 11 Comments

If you’re a fan of watching live channels, one of the best features of Fire TVs is the built-in program guide that combines channels from many apps and services into a single list. With a button that takes you directly to the guide on all modern Fire TV remotes, it’s handy to flip back and forth between channels no matter what service they’re from. While you can easily remove channels and services you don’t want to be included, the program guide can still easily become unwieldy with the number of channels it contains. Amazon has recently made changes to help filter through the channel guide that is already available on select devices and will, hopefully, be coming to more in the near future. Read more ›

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New Fire TV home screen layout brings focus to Games at the expense of User Profiles

Posted by Elias Saba on — 15 Comments

Amazon has been periodically tweaking the navigation menu of the current Fire TV home screen interface ever since it debuted three years ago. First, it reordered the menu, then increased app icon sizes, and then added an input switching icon for Fire TV Smart TVs before finally dropping all text and switching to an icon-only navigation menu. Earlier this year, Amazon added a new “Free” tab to the navigation menu before ultimately removing it. Amazon is now trying out another new tab for the Fire TV home screen with the addition of a “Games” tab that takes the place of the profile switcher icon in the navigation menu. Read more ›

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Three security vulnerabilities patched in latest Fire TV software update

Posted by Elias Saba on — 7 Comments

Cybersecurity firm Bitdefender has identified three security vulnerabilities in Fire TV devices that it says have been patched in Amazon’s recent software updates. The vulnerabilities were discovered and divulged to Amazon in December 2022 and were patched last month. Read more ›

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Fire TV update adds new navigation tab for Free streaming content

Posted by Elias Saba on — 11 Comments

Amazon has added another new tab to the navigation menu on Fire TV devices. The new addition this time around is a “Free” tab, denoted by an icon of a checkmark in a circle. As the name implies, the new tab lists rows of content that can be streamed for free, but there is a catch. Read more ›

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Amazon makes Sideloading on Fire TVs a seemingly more serious offence

Posted by Elias Saba on — 90 Comments

Amazon seems to have a love-hate relationship with sideloading apps on its Fire TV devices. On one hand, sideloading is a necessary feature of any Android-based device to attract developers and the flexibility sideloading provides consumers is certainly attractive to advanced buyers that like to tinker with their devices. On the other hand, sideloading likely accounts for some unwanted percentage of customer service calls and it gives consumers more ways out of Amazon’s walled garden. While nothing has, thankfully, been changed to the functionality of sideloading on Fire TV devices, a recent update has changed the on-device messaging about the act to be far more severe. Read more ›

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Fire TV Cube gains Improved Upscaling as well as DTS, DTS-HD, and Dolby True HD audio passthrough in latest software update

Posted by Elias Saba on — 34 Comments

Amazon is pushing a new software update to the 3rd-gen Fire TV Cube that should make video and audiophiles happy. Software version 7.6.1.3 (PS7613/3686) is currently rolling out to devices with improvements to the Super Resolution Upscaling feature that should make non-4K content look even sharper. The update is also adding a feature that has long been requested by surround sound enthusiasts, which is support for DTS, DTS-HD, and Dolby True HD audio passthrough. Read more ›

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Fire TV interface update for the Echo Show 15 has arrived

Posted by Elias Saba on — 100 Comments

Amazon announced in September that the Echo Show 15 would be receiving an update that turned it into a full-fledged Fire TV. With only a few weeks left in the year, the Fire TV update is now rolling out to Amazon’s largest Echo smart display, bringing the two product lines closer together than they’ve ever been. Read more ›

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Fire TV software update makes it easier than ever to get to your apps

Posted by Elias Saba on — 22 Comments

Every Fire TV owner knows you can place your six favorite apps in the Fire TV’s navigation menu for quick and easy access. To get to any of your other apps, you’ve had to select the Apps icon in the navigation bar to load up a grid view of all of your apps. Amazon has recently pushed a very welcomed software update to Fire TV devices that now lists all your apps in a horizontally scrollable list in the empty space below the Apps icon, eliminating the need to load the app grid. Read more ›

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Older Fire TVs can now control Bluetooth Headphone Volume with the remote as well

Posted by Elias Saba on — 9 Comments

About a year ago, Amazon pushed an update to newer Fire TV models that made it possible to control the volume of Bluetooth headphones and/or speakers paired to a Fire TV with the Fire TV remote’s volume buttons. At the time, it seemed like only Fire OS 7 devices, like the 3rd-gen Fire TV Stick and 2nd-gen Fire TV Cube, received the new capability. Now it looks like Amazon is finally bringing it to older Fire TV devices running Fire OS 6. At the very least, the Fire TV Stick 4K can now control Bluetooth volume using the remote volume buttons, which was not possible a few weeks ago. Other Fire OS 6 Fire TV models may be gaining the capability as well, but I haven’t had a chance to check, so please let everyone know in the comments if it works for you and which Fire TV model you are using. Thanks to everyone that contacted me about this new update!

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Netflix finally adds Frame Rate Matching for Amazon Fire TVs and Fire TV Sticks

Posted by Elias Saba on — 32 Comments

Netflix has finally added support for Frame Rate Matching on Amazon Fire TV devices. See here for a thorough explanation of the feature but, in short, this change now allows Fire TVs to change the refresh rate of your TV to exactly match the frame rate of the video being played through Netflix. The result is a perfectly smooth one-to-one correlation between the frames of a video and the frames being shown on the TV, which eliminates video judder artifacts. Read more ›

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