SpiceWare's Blog - fire TV

RSS Bot · October 13, 2016

My fire TV arrived today, it's quite small:

I don't have a new TV yet, and my old TV won't support it, so I have it plugged into one of my 4K monitors. 4K content looks awesome on it, as though I were looking out a window:

I've resubscribed to HBO NOW and had an unexpected surprise - another 30 day free trial :

I did have a minor issue though, after subscribing I could watch on the fire TV, but not via my iPad or browser on the computers. I contacted HBO and they told me I should have received an "Action Required: Complete Your Registration" email, but it'd been a few hours and hadn't shown up. Tried signing out and back in but no luck. They then had me uninstall/reinstall the app on the fire TV, and about 15 minutes after that the email showed up so I'm good to go - time to catch up on Westworld

I knew some of the Amazon series were in 4K, so went to watch Red Oaks (I highly recommend checking it out if you haven't seen it) again and it was still just HD:

After some research it turns out there's a separate area for 4K content:

Where you can find the UHD badged version of the show - it looks really good:

One minor issue to resolve - the fire TV only sends audio via HDMI which my monitor can handle, though it doesn't have built in speakers. I dug out some old ones, but they're not amplified so are difficult to hear (especially if the treadmill is going):

Since desk space is at a premium, I've ordered the sound bar for my monitor. Should be here this weekend.