There’s a lot of
choice in online TV right now. Amazon Fire TV is the newest, but is it the
best? (Spoiler: yes.) blog.mindrocketnow.com
I’ve run out of HDMI sockets! But on the bright side, I’ve a
new TV toy, Amazon Fire TV. I’ve had it for a month now, and it’s really
impressive. The unique selling point of voice search works really well – within
some limitations, the range of content is very good – with some reservations,
and the picture and sound quality is the best of the lot.
Voice search is simple to use – hold the button on the
remote down whilst you say the name of what you’re looking for, let got and let
Fire TV think, then select from options presented. It’s supposed to learn your
voice, but in practice it can understand any of the family, and other visitors
that have tried it out.
Its limitation is that it only searches within the Amazon
catalogue. Results are from each of the three tiers: free, free with Prime, and
paid. But results don’t include for example, iPlayer, so search results aren’t
necessarily the cheapest. Searching for episode 1 of this season’s Doctor Who will
take you to an option to buy for £3.49, rather than to watch for free on
iPlayer.
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Freeview HD
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Apple TV
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Now TV
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Chromecast
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Amazon Fire TV
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The incumbent
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The hobby
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The heavyweight
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The outsider
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The newcomer
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Exclusive Shows
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Live broadcast
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What we’ve bought from
iTunes
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First catch-up of Sky shows;
Live broadcast of Sky 1, Sky
Arts 1, Sky Atlantic
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Premiership football from BT
Sport;
Anything we’ve bought on
Google Play
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Old Doctor Who;
The Vikings
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Can we watch Agents of SHIELD?
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Yes – on C4 at broadcast, or catch-up on 4OD app, or from PVR
recording
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Yes – catch-up on 4OD app, or box set on Now TV app
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Yes – catch-up on 4OD app, or box set on Now TV
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Yes – catch-up on 4OD app, or box set on Now TV app
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Yes – box set from Amazon
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Can we watch Doctor Who?
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Yes – on BBC at broadcast, or catch-up on iPlayer app, or from PVR
recording
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Yes – catch-up on iPlayer app
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Yes – catch-up on iPlayer app
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Yes – catch-up on iPlayer app
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Yes – catch-up on iPlayer app – and we can watch old Doctor Who box
sets on Amazon
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Can we watch Game of Thrones?
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No – it’s on Sky
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Yes – live broadcast, first catch-up, and box set on Now TV app
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Yes – live broadcast on Sky Atlantic, first catch-up and box set on
Now TV
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Yes – live broadcast, first catch-up, and box set on Now TV app
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No – it’s on Sky
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Services
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Broadcast
iPlayer
YouTube
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iTunes Store Now TV
Podcasts
YouTube
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CNET TV
Demand 5
iPlayer
ITV Player
Now TV
TED Talks
TWiT
YouTube
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BT Sport
Google Play
iPlayer
Now TV
Red Bull TV
Wukai
YouTube
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Amazon Fire TV
Games
iPlayer
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Other features
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New services are
downloadable (though few are available)
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Many iOS apps can stream to
ATV;
Mac OSX can stream to ATV;
New services are
downloadable;
Can be jailbroken with e.g.
Plex
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Live streaming of major Sky
channels included;
New services are
downloadable;
Can be jailbroken with e.g.
Plex
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Rich search via iPhone;
Any site can be “cast” via
iPhone
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Games use dedicated
controller;
4k content coming
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Picture quality
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576i, 720p and 1080i
Excellent for Freeview HD,
acceptable for iPlayer HD, poor for broadcast SD and other apps
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720p
Excellent for iTunes store
content, poor for others
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720p
Excellent for on demand,
poor for live streaming
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Very variable up to 1080p
depending on bandwidth.
Some acceptable, some poor
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1080p
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Sound quality
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Dolby Digital on some BBC
iPlayer, others Dolby Pro Logic II or stereo
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Dolby Digital on iTunes
content, all others stereo
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Dolby Digital on Sky content,
all others stereo
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Stereo except some rare
YouTube content
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Dolby Digital plus on Amazon
content, all others stereo
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So it turns out that we can watch most of the things we want
to watch if we use the right combination of app + set top box. So the deciding
factor becomes: which platform has the shortest path to starting to watch?
When we know what we want to watch, we choose between Now TV
or Amazon Fire TV. Even though our phones are barely out of reach, it’s still
easier to use the STB by itself. Now TV’s menu options are easy to understand,
but scrolling does take a while. Amazon Fire TV’s voice search makes getting to
the chosen show a doddle, so if it’s a choice between the two, Amazon Fire TV
wins on ease of search.
When we don’t know what to watch, choosing is much more
difficult. Amazon has the familiar “people like you” recommended titles, which
are generally worthwhile pursuing. Now TV has curated content presented like
playlists. iPlayer curates individual titles, and is moving towards greater
effective personalisation.
Smartphone apps make it much quicker to sift through content
catalogues. More information can be presented and assessed quickly. Show images
and notes can link to IMDB entries or rotten tomatoes reviews. The only trouble
is, each platform has its own app, so you have to launch each in turn.
What we don’t generally do, is to launch the each of the
apps in turn to surf for something to watch. It’s too slow and not at all
impulsive to launch-close-launch each app.
The UI design for many of these apps are also shockingly poor; they are
studies in how to turn away eyeballs. ITV player is the worst: unenticing
synopses, organised by channel rather than anything meaningful to a potential
viewer, paucity of choice, makes for a painful experience.
The most favoured idle surfing technique is the oldest; it’s
still to flick through the EPG, pressing “info” now and again, to see how long
it takes before the quality threshold lowers enough to make selecting movies4men
a good idea. None of the new methods have yet to beat this “spreadsheet” view
in ease to finding something.
Actually, for me, the deciding factor is: which combination
gives the best picture and sound quality? It’s a different computation depending
on what I want to watch. Because I’ve recorded the latest series of Agents of
SHIELD onto the PVR from C4HD, the picture and sound is better than catch-up
from 4OD – 1080i and Dolby Digital. However, in a general case, Amazon Fire TV
is very impressive indeed. Picture quality is 1080p and sound is Dolby Digital
plus, both from Amazon content and some content from apps like iPlayer.
So in summary: Amazon Fire is now the family go-to set top
box for watching TV, because we can go from knowing what we want to watch to
actually watching it, with the least amount of cognitive friction. However,
none of our boxes help us to conjure something from nothing to watch on the TV.
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