Smart Devices: Expert Guides and Resources

Alexa works as a smart-home controller, so it can recognize and work with multiple devices from multiple manufacturers. An Alexa device such as an Echo or Echo Spot is an example of such a controller. Devices Alexa can control (like thermostats, speakers, TVs, and so on) just have to be compatible. You must make sure you get smart-home devices that are compatible with your controller, so be sure to buy items that are Alexa compatible.

SummaryThe Amazon Fire Stick is a portable streaming device that plugs into your TV's HDMI port, giving you access to TV shows, movies, subscription services like Netflix and Hulu, music, and games. It connects to the internet via Wi-Fi and comes with a remote, which often includes Alexa voice control for easy searching.

The Amazon Alexa equivalent of apps are called skills. Like a mobile device, Alexa can do a few things out of the box, such as playing music or audiobooks, telling you the time or the weather, and making voice or video calls. But if you want to know how to use Alexa to perform more specialized tasks, then you need to add the appropriate skills from the Amazon Alexa skills list.

No device is completely infallible. This article explains ten of the most common problems related to Fire TV software and hardware, and shows you how to solve every one of them.Fire TV devices, such as the Fire TV Stick, Fire TV Stick 4K, and Fire TV Cube, are extremely simple, spartan even, when viewed from the outside.

Alexa isn’t difficult to set up. But after the initial startup chores are complete, perhaps the most common question people ask is, “What do I do now?” It’s a reasonable question, especially if you’re looking at an Echo, Echo Dot, or Echo Plus, which give you no hints about what your next step is supposed to be.

Fire TV makes your life simpler by bringing a bunch of streaming services under a single roof. However, that simplicity hides a complicated system that takes a while to master. To help you smooth out that initial learning curve, this Cheat Sheet offers a handy reference to a few important Fire TV things. Here you’ll find a quick guide to the most important Fire TV settings, a list of 50 — yep, 50 — of the most useful Fire TV–related Alexa voice requests, and a comprehensive glossary of words and phrases related to Fire TV and streaming stuff.

Electronics such as Amazon’s Fire TV devices — the Fire TV Stick, Fire Stick 4K, and Fire TV Cube — are streaming media devices.Explore the two-sides-of-the-same-coin ideas of streaming media and streaming media devices, which are at the core of the Fire TV experience. Do you really need to know this background to use Fire TV?

Your Fire TV Edition comes with an Alexa Voice Remote that you use to navigate the Fire TV interface (either by pressing buttons or by using voice commands). Before proceeding with the Fire TV Edition configuration, remove the back cover of the Alexa Voice Remote, insert the two batteries that came with Fire TV Edition, and then reattach the back cover.