Hello everybody

Well, here we are in a brand new week, and I’d like to give you my overall 
conclusions regarding the second generation Alexa-powered Amazon Fire TV.

Price is quite reasonable. If you don’t already own an Alexa-powered device for 
audio, this might be a way for you to go. You can stream to, or from, the Fire 
TV in order to use either external video and audio, or to pie the output to a 
Bluetooth® speaker. The speaker solution seems a little pointless, given that 
the device needs to be connected to an HDMI device in order to function. It 
does not, however, take its power from the HDMI target, as the power 
requirements exceed those provided via the HDMI source. Instead, the power 
source is USB Micro, 5V at 200MA. Perhaps ironically, I have mine taking power 
from the Amazon Echo via a battery base. A power supply is provided with the 
unit. However, doing it this way is more convenient for me personally.

Regarding my number 1 concern, accessibility, I find myself a little 
disappointed. Yes, there is voice feedback when you are simply issuing commands 
via the Voice Remote. However, if you don’t know what is available on the 
device, you have absolutely no voice feedback as you navigate the menus and 
options. Therefore, for a blind person, there is only partial accessibility. 
However, all is not necessarily doom and gloom. Once you learn your way around 
the device, most of what you want to do can be accessed via voice commands. For 
instance, you can say something like:
“Play BBC News”
“Play BBC1”
“Play Fox News”
etc., etc., etc..

One thing that did strike me as odd was the fact that in the Alexa App, network 
configuration is not possible. Therefore, it is necessary for visual assistance 
to be available in order to use the remote to configure your network 
connection. However, once done, that is not really an issue unless you need to 
change networks for some reason.

My overall conclusions based on a couple of hours playing with this thing are 
that, unless you want to play movies or videos or TV shows which are available 
on Amazon, you’re probably better off with the Echo series of devices. I need 
to play more with this thing to see if there is any other way to address the 
accessibility issues. So it’s back to the drawing board really for men order to 
gain access to net TV. I still haven’t got my Neo box configured, much to my 
frustration.

========================================

My compliments and kindest regards
Gordon Smith:
<gor...@mac-access.net>

Accessibility & Information Technology Support Specialist..

  Contact:

• UK Geographic – +44(0) 1642 688095
• UKFree Phone – 0800 8620538
• UK Mobile – +44 (0) 7907 823971

• Australia Geographic – +61 38 82059300
• US Geographic – +1 646 9151493Mobile/SMS:

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