FIRE TV STICK LITE
HDMI stick
Amazon’s media stick is loaded and well-priced, but Australia doesn’t get the 4K goodies.
Some sensitive souls simply eschew Amazon entirely, citing the ever-expanding riches of Jeff Bezos, the impact of its online operation on traditional retailers, its record on wages, and tax minimisation strategies which saw its three local entities achieving a combined tax bill of just over $20 million in Australia for 2018 — on revenues of more than a billion dollars, according to the ABC.
Then again, many love Amazon: it helps them get what they want; it delivers fast; it’s invariably price-competitive; its website is highly efficient. And of course it makes its own branded products — the Alexa Echo smart devices and speakers, its range of Fire TV sticks, and so much more… in the US, indeed, the company actually has more than 130 private-label brands, plus a great many more which are exclusive to the Amazon marketplace.
Even the most devoted Australian Amazophile may, however, have been feeling neglected by the desultory release of Amazon hardware here. Perhaps that was initially because for years we lacked a dedicated Amazon storefront, but even after that arrived, the company not only didn’t make many of its hardware products available, it prevented us buying them from the States. It gradually phased in Alexa Echo products, but until now it has never released its Fire TV sticks in Australia, though a great many were brought here via other channels.
Now at last, we have a Fire Stick officially available in Australia. Just the one, though, and disappointingly we only get the Fire Stick Lite. In the US there are three main Fire Sticks available, including a 4K model, plus the Fire TV Cube. For us, just the Lite. So what does this offer, and what are we missing out on?
Equipment
The Fire Stick Lite is certainly a solid package for the remarkably low price. You get a remote control as well as the stick itself, which has an HDMI plug on the end of a shank so wide that we figured it would block sockets to either side of it — but the next thing out of the box was a small extension cable which has a narrow plug, thereby overcoming precisely that objection. It requires also a USB power connection, for which a mains plug is supplied; we tried using one of the USB sockets on a Samsung One Box connection hub and while this was enough to launch the stick, it informed us that more power was needed, so we switched it over to the supplied mains adapter.
Remarkably the Lite Stick contains within its shell a 1.7GHz quad-core processor fast enough to keep interface interactions quick and smooth, while the dual-band, dual-antenna Wi-Fi supports both 2.4 and 5GHz networks to maintain stable streaming.
The main interface has just had a major update, supposedly simplifying and clarifying access, as well
as usefully allowing up to six different profiles so that, like Netflix, it can provide tailored watch lists and recommendations so that your partner’s preference for murder doesn’t mix with your own preference for sci-fi or your kids’ addiction to Bluey, and vice versa. We also liked the way it allows you to initially populate its apps en masse (you’ll need an Amazon account for this, and everything else), selecting as many as you like in one go so the whole lot then downloads in the background — a much faster system than on, say, AppleTV units, where you select and install, select and install, over and over again. Once downloaded, you can (slightly laboriously) reorder apps on the Fire TV interface, whereafter your top six will appear dead centre on the Stick’s home screen, ready to select.
Meanwhile you’ll receive an email bill for all the apps you’ve downloaded. They’re all charged at $0.00, but it’s a timely reminder that the Stick, like Echo devices, is attached to your Amazon account and thus potentially to your credit card. It might be wise to pop into settings and disable the ‘in-app purchases’ option.
There are other settings that should be tweaked. With its default settings the Stick streams in 1080p at 60 frames per second (or to be precise, 59.94) — and is locked to it. This would thereby deliver awful video judder on material at 50fps material (as used for Australian video) and 3:2 pulldown judder on 24fps material (pretty much every film ever made). Yet products locked to 60Hz are bizarrely common, especially media players and projection products using DLP chips from Texas Instruments.
Thankfully since 2018 there has been an option available in the menus of Fire TV sticks to use the frame rate of the original source. Clearly this option should be selected, but be aware it won’t work with all apps. It seemed to successfully deliver 50Hz from Australian apps like ABC iView, but it won’t deliver 24fps (or 23.967fps) or 50Hz from the Netflix app, apparently simply because Netflix hasn’t updated its Amazon app to do so (possibly a deliberate choice, because they’re rivals). The frame-rate matching certainly works with Amazon’s own Prime app, which also supports extended voice commands — fast-forward, rewind, pause or play, and for commands such as saying “Alexa, play The Boys.” The supplied remote is the Alexa Voice Remote Lite, which includes a microphone for Alexa use and voice control; just press and talk. Higher versions of this remote add volume control, but we don’t think that’s too much of an omission on a media player anyway.
While you’re in the settings, you may wish to tighten the data monitoring and privacy settings (which default to, er, no privacy). Your call.
Performance
As noted, the stick supplied to Australia doesn’t support Ultra High Definition, only 1080p. We thought this a little softer than it should be, and in our efforts to sharpen it we got hung up on a supplied test screen which puts arrows on the screen and invites you to make them fit your display. Since they were currently pushed off the screen in a presumed overscan, we brought them back to the screen edges, resulting in what the Stick announced to be ‘2% scan’, presumably an underscan, which could well soften resolution compared with pixel-for-pixel display. But it was necessary, because the Stick was clearly over-expanding real content — the left menu on Disney+, for example, was pushed too close to the screen edge until we applied this ‘calibration’.
Impressively there’s also an audio sync setting, where you align a bouncing ball with rippling horizontal lights, and this appeared to have some small negative time adjustment available, which equates to video delay, highly unusual now that video has got so big, although of course here it’s only dealing with 2K video frames, not 4K.
Given this 2K limitation it was a surprise to find that HDR is supported, even HDR10+ being possible from some Amazon Prime shows. To be honest this was hard to assess, with neither stick nor TV reporting clear codec information. Soundwise, while other Fire TV sticks unavailable to Australia support Dolby Atmos soundtracks, the Lite doesn’t, only offering regular Dolby Digital audio. But this matters only if you’re running an Atmos-compatible sound system or soundbar.
A key question for many will be which apps are supported. HDMI sticks like this and Google’s ‘Chromecast with Google TV’ are often presented as solutions to turn a dumb TV into a smart TV. But they’re often also useful as an addendum to a smart TV, because not all smart TVs support all apps. Disney+ is a typical example — it’s available on Samsung and LG TVs, and most TVs with an Android TV interface, but not on other smart TV platforms. So if you have, say, a Hisense smart TV, there’s no Disney+ for you unless you add a stick or a media player like the Fire TV stick.
And the number of available apps is vast — we gave up counting, and have listed those we downloaded in the panel. We struggled to think of anything which isn’t here, except Foxtel Go, Kayo, Binge and BritBox (for now).
Conclusion
With a great deal of entertainment on a stick for $59 (currently $49) — and better settings than many devices in being able to follow original frame rates and resolutions, even a little bit of HDR on the side, what’s not to like? Except, of course, for Amazon not bringing Australia the 4K version...