today i'm going to show you how to set
up the brand new amazon fire tv stick
we're going to go through the full setup
process
how you are able to use the fancy remote
how you can use your phone as a remote
download all your favorite applications
and even use your echo
to control your fire tv stick let's get
started
[Music]
hey everybody welcome to tech with brett
where i help tech work for you
so this is the new 2020 version of the
fire tv stick
now there are two different models i'll
get to that in a second but a fire tv
stick allows you to add
smart tv functionality to pretty much
any tv
so as long as you have an hdmi port that
looks like this on your tv
you will be able to use this and add
this functionality to your tv you maybe
already have an older version of this
so this is just a newer version now up
here at the top we can see a bunch of
different applications these are
probably the apps that you most likely
are using
and there are a ton of other
applications that you can use
as well so here it does come with a
remote
and this version has volume controls and
a power control up there so if your tv
supports it you'll be able to turn on
and off your tv
and adjust the volume all from this
remote and then this
is what gives your tv this smart
functionality you plug this
into the hdmi port now looking on the
side here it talks a little bit more
about some of the specifications
so here you do have it press and ask the
amazon assistant for different things
here you can also have power and volume
controls
here you have dolby atmos this is a
1080p
model and this has a quad core processor
amazon says it's 50
faster than the previous model and this
will work with
wi-fi 802.11 ac now i do want to mention
the difference between the fire tv stick
and
the fire tv stick light so the light
version
doesn't have the volume buttons on the
remote that's one of the differences
and the other difference is over here on
the side it has
a pass through dolby atmos and not just
the main dolby atmos so i don't
really know the difference between that
but this is just going to have a better
quality audio
versus the fire tv stick light
and then here on the back it just talks
about how great performance picture
and dolby audio tens of thousands of
channels apps and
skills um you can use the amazon
assistant so
you'll notice that i don't say uh this
word in my videos
i'll say amazon voice assistant or
amazon assistant
so you can talk to the assistant right
through the remote
and you can do more with your tv now
i do recommend getting a fire tv device
if you already have different amazon
devices so if you already have
echo devices in your home or if you're
already a prime subscriber or you're
using amazon music
those are all great reasons to pick up a
fire tv stick
and if you don't have any of those you
can still use this
no problem so let's go ahead and look
and see what is inside the box
so over here on the side
so there we have our remote
here we have the fire tv stick
here we have an hdmi extender cable this
is nice if you
can't get the fire stick right in the
back of your tv you will be able to
angle it with this
here you have the instructions and
here's how to get the one year of food
network kitchen
for free and then here you have a
micro usb cable and the very last thing
in here
is a power brick as well as two
aaa batteries that you will use for the
remote so let's go ahead and put those
in
so on the remote here we have the power
button our voice assistant here you have
left right up down
and then you can press the select button
you have back home
and menu rewind pause play and forward a
volume up and down
and then mute and then here we have our
fire tv
stick so here is where you will plug in
the power so you're going to plug
the end of this cable into there so
let's go ahead and get this plugged into
the tv
and i'll show you how to set it up
so now we're just going to plug in the
fire tv stick into an
open hdmi and then we're going to plug
in the micro usb into it
and now when you plug it into the wall i
recommend plugging it directly into the
wall and not the usb
into the tv now i'm going to power on
the tv with my tv remote so once my tv
is on i'm then going to navigate to that
input i put it in so i'm going to go to
my input or source button
and then i'm gonna come over here to the
unknown hdmi one
and i'm going to tap on that and now
here
it is showing me my fire tv so if you
don't ever see your fire tv stick show
up you need to make sure that you change
to the correct input
and then we're going to use the fire tv
stick remote to navigate through
and here it says press the plus pause to
start
so here i'm just going to navigate
through choose my language
then it's going to scan and find a wi-fi
network
so this is the network i want to add it
to
then i'm going to type that in and if
you press the menu that will jump back
and forth between capital and lowercase
so that really helps it
make it so it's easier to type it in and
then if you mess up you can press the
rewind to go back
and you can push the fast forward to go
forward
and then once i have my password in i
can push the
play button and then it will connect
next it's going to check for any updates
if there is one it's going to install it
and once that's finished we'll carry on
the update is now complete
now the next menu it's asking for me to
sign into
my amazon account so you can select i
already have an account
or add a new account so i already have
an amazon account
and here it's going to have you use your
computer or your phone
to sign in with the code on screen
alright so i just finished signing in on
my phone it said registration is
complete
and there it logged me right in now when
i purchased i asked it to register the
fire tv stick to my account
so here it's asking if i want to keep it
on my account or if i wanted to change
the account
so i'm going to say keep on my account
and now it's asking if you want to save
your wi-fi password to your amazon
account so the next amazon product you
set up
it will automatically sign you into your
wi-fi so i'm going to select yes
next it's going to ask about parental
control so before you buy something
you may want to have a pin code on there
so that your kids aren't purchasing all
kinds of movies
so i am going to enable parental
controls
and then here you're going to type in
the pin that you want to use
so this pin is going to help protect
purchases protect
app launches so you can restrict certain
applications
and enable viewing restrictions on
certain content 14 and above
on prime video so i like that i have
kids that would be using this so it's
nice that
it is protecting that content next it's
going to make sure our audio system is
set
up so we're going to tap next and it's
going to play so make sure that the
volume is
up
[Music]
so with your fire tv remote pointed at
your tv toggle the volume up and down so
i'm just going to point it right here
and press volume up and down and there
you can see it is controlling my tv
or whatever my tv is set to control
which is my sound system
so that works great and then i'm going
to select yes
that changed the volume and now my tv
remote is
set up
next we're going to choose the streaming
service apps that we want to have
on our fire tv so let's select get
started
and here we're going to tap on the ones
we want to download so we watch disney
plus
hulu we don't watch any of those other
ones we're going to move next
we don't really watch any of these tv
shows maybe i'll
add nbc next we have some sports
applications that we could download
and here we have a few more apps i'm not
using any of those services so i'm just
going to press play to continue
and then it's going to download those
applications in the background
and now we are at our fire tv stick
interface so you can see automatically
it is pulling up all kinds of content so
this is something we were previously
watching
on prime video so that popped up here
are other movies that i own
that are in my amazon prime video
library that are showing up
and then down here it's showing other
apps and channels now i do want to
mention that this
menu is going to change i was hoping
that it was already changed
but as of right now it's the old menu
that was on previous fire tvs
so nothing currently is different but
once that
updates i'll do another video about the
update
on that so here you can browse around
and you can just
find things to watch if i want to go
into an application i can easily
navigate to it
press the button go into the app and if
you need to sign
in you will need to do that or here it's
saying hey you actually need to download
this before you can
open that up so let's download that
let's see here's another one i want to
have youtube tv on here
so we're going to go and download that
and so anytime you want to go back to
the home screen you just push the home
button
it's going to take you right back to the
home you could also push back button
now i don't want to spend a ton of time
on the home screen here as it will be
updated
but here are some tips on how to
personalize it so let's say you see an
application down here
and you want to move it out of the way
or you want to see it more present
so when you go to the app if you push
menu
then it gives you the option down here
to move it
more info or uninstall so let's say i
move
so then it opens up this menu where i
can then move netflix back a little bit
further
so here it's showing all the
applications that i've installed on my
account
so if i want to redownload some of these
i can then just click on it here
and go through the download process and
so that's a little tip on how you can
organize the apps
row there's not much more organization
with everything else
here you're going to see a sponsored row
here you're going to just see some
originals and there's nothing that you
can really do with that
if you do see a movie and you push menu
you have the option over here to add it
to
your watch now with prime watch trailer
add to watch list
or remove it from your list so that's
really nice if you see something you
like but you don't want to watch it
right away
you can add it to your watch list to
watch it later so
this menu is kind of just curating
different things that you have
on the fire tv to help you find things
to watch
or apps that you like to use so as you
go down you'll just see
different recommendations that amazon
has for you
but at the top if you go all the way to
the top here you can see this row so we
have our home
we have live so here's it's showing
different live tv options
your videos so things that i actually
own in my library or things that i've
watched
here we have different free videos we
can watch because of amazon prime video
and then here we have movies so
different movies that we could buy or
rent
here we have tv shows and then here we
have
applications so if you want to find a
specific app you would come in here and
go through
and then you could download those
applications so then here i can find
different apps that i may want to use
let's click on netflix and i need to
download netflix
so let's go ahead and download that now
and it's cued so it's going to download
in the background
and it usually will show you a pop-up
when that download is finished
so there at the bottom it says press
menu to launch
netflix now or here we can just select
open alright now this
app does require my pin code so if i
want to adjust that i can go into the
menu to turn off
the parental controls right so now we
are in netflix but
i need to sign into my account so if i
press sign in
here it's gonna pop up with this menu
and if you do have a lot to type in
sometimes it's kind of hard to type
everything in with this little remote so
let me show you a cool trick you can do
on another device to quickly enter this
info
um you just need to go and download the
fire tv application
all right so here i have the fire tv
application downloaded
i'm going to open that up here it's
saying do you want to know about
announcement
sure and now it's going to find a device
on your network to control so here we
have brett's fire tv stick
so we're going to tap on that and then
it's going to pop open
a number on the tv that we need to type
in
type that in now it's linked my app with
the tv
here you have an option to enable the
buttons to push
or you can just use the touchpad and
swipe up and down
so let's do let's do that later
so now on screen we have these different
options where we can swipe we can
go up and down so you can see over there
on the screen that i can navigate
through by
touching and swiping now is what i want
to do is i want to press the keyboard up
here
and the keyboard then allows me to just
type in
what i want to write down so instead of
having to
go through and type out every letter of
your email address you can just pull up
the application
and quickly type that in
just like that and then we can go back
and we can then navigate down to next
and now we can do the same thing on our
password without having to go through
this menu with the remote
changing capital and go to special
characters and all that we can just do
it right here
passwords may not work the best i keep
accidentally
selecting yes and i'm not finished
typing in my password so maybe this
isn't the best option for passwords
all right so now i'm in i can continue
using my phone
to act as the remote so i can then swipe
through and
go find what i want to use i also have
the options on here to
press play so if we want to watch
something i can then just push
the play button it will then play i have
the home button here
i have back and a lot of cool stuff
right in this remote if you don't happen
to have your
usual remote so not only do you have the
option to navigate by going left and
right
if you pull down right here you can talk
to the amazon voice assistant so
you hold down what's the weather like
tomorrow
so there you can see it is able to
interact with the fire tv stick here we
have an option to adjust
the app that we are currently using so
if i push that let's say i want to go
into disney plus
i can tap on disney plus and then it
will take me right there
so that's really cool that you can
quickly jump to those different
applications
without having to navigate through the
main menu to even find it
you are able to do that right there now
if we
close this and go into the settings you
do have an option to
change the fire tv remote to add the
directional pad
so what that does it gives me this pad
to navigate so then i can go left right
up down
and select so i kind of like the swiping
option a little bit better
but that is how you can use the fire tv
remote so
now let's go ahead and go over here
under the settings
and show you a few things that you can
do so next we're going
to go under display and sounds and if
you have the parental controls on here
it makes it so the kids can't come in
and adjust any of the settings
so under here we have the option to
personalize our screensaver
so we can come in here and right now
it's just showing
an amazon collection screensaver but you
can actually use the amazon photos
application to upload your own photos
and create an album and so i can come in
here and then i could
choose some of their other ones so here
i could choose your photos where it's
just going to choose
all of the photos that i have on my
amazon
photos library or i can come down here
and it's going to
show different albums that i created so
here i created one called 2020 adventure
or it's going to show different
locations that i have photos taken in so
let's go ahead and choose 2020
adventures
and then down here i can choose the
different styles so in the background
you can see what it's like so pan and
zoom
here i have the dissolve option or i
could also choose the mosaic where it's
going to put a bunch of pictures
on the screen at once pan and zoom is
kind of fun so we'll leave it on that
you can change the slide speed how long
it takes to start when you're not using
the fire tv um you can add smart
captions
hints and you could turn off shuffle
let's go ahead
and turn that on so that's the screen
saver next you have display
so this is a 1080p fire stick the fire
stick 4k
is two years old um but that might be a
better option if you want the 4k version
and you can go down to 720p
if your tv only supports 720p
and you have this option for matching
frame rate so this is kind of nice
where it will automatically adjust
depending on what frame rate the video
is
um with your tv i've had that turned on
before and it
seemed to work just great so um the
other option is to double check your
audio so you can turn off navigation
sounds
if you don't want it to beep every time
you press something you can turn that
off
here you can choose surround sound so if
something's not working right you can
adjust the surround sound options here
and then here is a really cool option
this is enable display
mirroring so what this does is it allows
you to
mirror certain devices to your tv
so with this you can actually mirror
your phone
right to your fire tv so here on my
samsung phone
i'm just going to go into the
notification panel here
and i have an option called smart view
so i'm going to tap on smart view
and it's showing me a bunch of options i
have because i have other chromecast and
different things in my home
but right here you see brett's fire tv
stick
so i can tap on that select start now
and now it's going to
mirror my screen so whatever i'm doing
on my phone it's going to mirror that to
the tv and now this is really nice if
you want to
mirror something maybe the videos or
whatever you're doing on your phone
so that others can see you are able to
do that so you can see it does lag
a little bit so you're not going to play
games or anything with this
but it's nice that you do have that
option so let's say i want to show you
some pictures that i have on my phone
i can go in here open the pictures if i
rotate my device
so there you can see everything i'm
doing on my phone it shows up over there
on the tv so that's just nice if you
want to show off some things to the rest
of your family you're able to do that
really quickly
uh with the mirroring option on the fire
tv stick
now to exit i'm just going to select
back now it asks if i want to exit
display mirroring
and then i'm done and here you can turn
on and off hdmi cec
so if your remote is not adjusting your
tv with the volume
you may need to come in here and turn
that on you might also want to check the
settings of your actual
tv settings to see if there's an option
to turn on
hdmi cec once you turn that on
then you should be able to control with
the remote so those
are the display and sound settings i
think that's pretty important to know
and then if you do need to adjust any of
the other settings you can come in here
and you have all those options here if
you did want to turn off those parental
controls you would come in here
under preferences and here at the top
you have parental controls
and so here allows you to adjust what
it's going to protect so maybe i don't
want it to protect
opening applications i can turn that off
here if i want to protect my photos i
can keep that
and you can change your pin right there
and
so that's pretty much the main things
you would want to know about
in the settings here now the next thing
i want to talk about
is the ability to use a voice assistant
so
here under the alexa option so if we
come in here it then gives us some
different suggestions
or things that we can try with our voice
assistant on the tv
so let's go ahead and try it out so to
use this i'm just going
to hold down the microphone button and
then ask my question open netflix
and there it opened the application
right away
now this will allow you to use whatever
things that you have
linked to your amazon assistant so if i
want to find the weather
or if i want to check my calendar it's
able to do that as well
play iron man
search for how to train your dragon 3
all right so here i'm in netflix and it
searched for how to train your dragon
but it couldn't find the movie let's go
back to the home page and try that again
how to train your dragon 3
all right so here it pulled up um the
actual movie that i do want to watch
so i can select that movie and it's
opening up amazon video and it's asking
if i want to watch the trailer
watch it now because i purchased it
or you can see more ways to watch so i
could watch with amazon
or i could actually watch it in the hulu
application so let's go ahead
and watch this movie for a little bit so
we're going to select watch now
okay now that we're watching the video i
can easily pause
and play right from the remote if i
press the menu
it's going to pull up a few things over
here on the side we can watch from the
beginning
turn on subtitles we have audio options
and then down here you also have the
view all x-ray so if i push
up x-ray allows you to see what actors
are currently on screen
um it's going to tell you more about the
cast and characters and trivia
so that's one of the cool things about
using an amazon device or prime video
is it allows you to see all the
information without having to go to imdb
it's all built right in here
and you have trivia all all in one so
that's
really really cool and then for the
other buttons if i want to fast forward
i just push the fast forward button it's
going to fast forward 10 seconds if i
hold it down
it's then going to start scanning
through and then i could use the remote
to
fast forward a little bit more go to the
part
that i want and then i can easily pause
the video right there and then i have
the volume controls right here
so that's pretty much how you can use
the remote and the fire tv stick
now you're also able to control your
smart home right from the amazon remote
using your
amazon voice assistant show me the front
door
and here i have a ring video doorbell
pro that it can
then just pull up right on the tv and i
can view it i can then talk through the
camera by holding down
the voice button which is pretty cool i
can then control my smart
lights and everything else that you
would use your amazon assistant for
right here on the remote which is pretty
neat now one last really cool feature
is let's say you don't have your remote
close by or maybe you lost it and you
want to still
control certain things on your fire tv
stick
you can actually link your fire tv stick
with an echo device so i have an echo
dot right here
that we can link together to control
let's see if it will work right now
play on fire tv stick i couldn't find a
device or group named brett's fire dv
stick in brett's profile
so that didn't work let me show you how
to fix that next we're going to head
into the amazon
voice assistant application and then
we're going to go under
the more tab down here at the bottom
right
and then we're going to select settings
now there are a lot of settings under
here but we're going to scroll through
and find tv and video option right here
and the very first option under this is
fire tv
so we're going to tap on fire tv and now
we're going to select
link your alexa device so here it's
showing the
different devices that i have that are
fire tvs so i'm going to choose brett's
fire tv stick
connect and then i'm going to link it
with a certain echo
device so here i have my brett's echo.3
i'm going to tap on that link device
and now it's going to link them together
now is what that does
is it allows you to control with a voice
your fire tv stick with your echo device
so we're going to move the phone out of
the way and show you how that works
so without touching anything else
play
it now played on the tv which it didn't
do before
pause
so it now recognizes when something is
playing on the fire tv stick
and can be controlled with the echo open
plex on fire tv stick getting it from
fire tv
so there it went to the plex application
to download it i will need to use the
remote
but to get to this point i didn't have
to have the remote
open disney plus
getting disney plus from fire tv alexa
turn the volume down on the fire tv
that was a bit hard to see but it did
adjust the volume on the tv
without me touching anything on the
remote so it's really nice that you have
this integration
with the echo device and the fire tv
stick so if you already have one of
those
it's a really cool thing to have and now
we can also ask it to play things
completely by voice play end game on
fire tv
getting avengers end game from prime
video
and there it started the movie and
continued off where i was
and if your tv supports it you can say
alexa
turn off the tv
and alexa turn on the tv
that's pretty cool now another way to
send videos from your phone
to your fire tv stick is through the
casting options so it's how this works
let's say we go into netflix here on my
phone and i
want to play something first down here
you're going to see this little
tv cast icon so i'm going to tap that
and
usually it shows just chromecast devices
but it will also show
amazon devices so here we have brett's
fire tv stick
i'm going to tap on that there you can
see my tv
changed and it's opening netflix and
then let's say i want to watch the
smurfs here i'm going to
select play and now it's going to play
that movie
right over on the tv without me having
to
touch the remote so that's really nice
if you're using your phone to browse to
find something to watch
you find it you can easily play it over
there on the tv
now that will also work with other
applications like here under youtube
i can tap that same cast icon here i
have brett's fire tv stick
it's going to load up the youtube
application
and then i could find something to watch
and play it over there
on the tv so it's really cool that you
have that integration as well
with the fire tv stick and then here
it's even give me an option to
sign into the tv so that i have my
account
linked up alexa go home
and one last trick if you do hold down
the home button
it's going to pop open this menu so here
you can see the time
here we can then quickly jump into our
applications
so it's going to take us right to all of
the apps
let's go back here if we want to sleep
so send amazon fire tv stick to sleep
to wake up press select button on the
remote
here you have the option to turn on the
mirroring easily without having to go
into the settings
and then here you have the option to go
into the settings
so that's just kind of something that's
nice to know how to quickly get to
some of those different options and then
we can just push the power button on the
remote
to turn off the tv hopefully this was
helpful in getting your fire tv stick
set up so that you can use it to its
full capacity
now i may have missed a few features
here or there so if you have any further
questions about anything i talked about
today
please let me know in the comments below
and i'll do my best to get back to you
and answer those or make follow-up
videos
on further features down the road now
there is one more feature that i didn't
talk about today where you can actually
use your fire tv stick
as a home theater system with echo
devices that you have in your home
so if you want to know how to do that
check the video out over here on the
side
thank you so much for watching we'll see
you on the next one