Family Amazon Fire TV is certainly not as big as that of echo devices, but with the imminent arrival of a newcomer to the family, a quick overview is in order.
Amazon Fire TV: what for?
The Fire TV will connect to your television via an HDMI plug and allow you to launch the applications of its operating system on your screen: Fire OS. Thus, you will have access to Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Molotov.tv, MyCanal… To mention only streaming. But also to games, to your photos in the cloud Amazon, the possibility of doing Karaoke with Amazon Music or just listen to music ...
The main advantage is therefore to be able to turn your TV into Smart TV, but also to have access without any problem to Amazon Prime Video, not always available on FAI decoders, and not to limit yourself to tablets Amazon Fire, to some Amazon Echo on screen or to your smartphones and PCs.
Comparison of the different models Amazon Fire TV
You can find, to date, 3 models Amazon Fire TV on sale in France: Fire TV Sticks. They are recognizable by their shape of a large USB key, but with an HDMI plug. They are also supplied with a remote control.
Le Fire TV Cube should arrive soon and is the most evolved of the Fire TVs. With a loudspeaker it will behave like a Amazon Echo by being able to answer you directly.
Fire TV Stick Basic Edition
Fire TV Stick
This is the best compromise for small budgets or for slightly old-fashioned TVs.
Fire TV Stick 4K
Know that even if your TV is not 4K, you will gain in image quality and fluidity, your TV giving its maximum. It is a very good choice for movie buffs. It can also connect with one or two Echo Studio to have a home cinema in Dolby Atmos! It is the most complete currently on sale in France.
Fire TV Cube
You have in this cube (so it's not a TV Stick), 2 GB RAM et 16 GB storage, but above all, in addition to being 4K, Dolby Vision et Dolby Atmos, there is a speaker 40 mm, turning it into some sort of Echo device.
Where the Fire TV Stick 4K is going to need your TV or Echo connected via Bluetooth to be audible, the Fire TV Cube will be able to be independent. Very useful, for example, if the TV is off and you quickly ask for the day's weather forecast. The sound is roughly equivalent to that of the Dot 3.
As standard it comes with a Ethernet adapter, but also with a Fire TV Blaster, an IR relay to be able to replace your old remote control and control your TV by voice in its daily operation. His 1,9 GHz Hexacore processor in fact the most powerful of the range. In the USA and Canada, the Fire TV Cube can replace Internet Service Providers' TV decoders. It seems very unlikely in France. Unfortunately.
We hear you from there. What is Dolby? What about Dolby Vision? Dolby Atmos? HDR +? A quick little popularization lesson never hurts.
Audio and video formats
Audio formats
This type of format is used for HD TV, Blu-Ray's, DVD's ... 5.1 means that there are 5 possible channels (front left and right, central and rear left and right) plus an optional channel for bass ( with a box).
You will therefore have the impression of having an airplane above your head, if the film you are watching features one, of course. This is why we are talking about 3D sound.
Video formats
Let's talk about resolution, so number of points on the image. There is a difference between definition and resolution, but between us, apart from farting, it's not going to change your life!
Everyone knows Ultra-HD or 4K well, without knowing what it is ...
First of all, you should know that the SD (Standard Definition) is an image with 720 x 480 pixels. Do you remember the cathode ray screens or even the screens in the aircraft files? Well that's it ...
HD (High Definition) is a 16: 9 format, encoded in MPEG-4, has a resolution of 1080p or 720p.
- Le HD Ready has a resolution of 720p (1280 x 720 pixels, 16/9 format, or 0.9 Megapixels). This is the quality of basic streaming videos.
- Le Full HD has a resolution of 1080p (1920 x 1080 pixels, 16/9 format, or 2 Megapixels). This is Blu-Ray quality.
- Le 4K or Ultra-HD 4K has a resolution of 2160p, (display standard UHDTV1, 3840 x 2160 pixels, 16/9 format, or 8.8 Megapixels),
- Le 8K or UHD-8K it's even more, with a resolution 4320p (display standard UHDTV2, 7680 x 4320 pixels, 16/9 format, or 33 Megapixels!).
Contrast and brightness
The format SHR (standard) gives a rather dark image, more than the natural image (we come back to screens in airplanes). With HDR, picture brightness is greatly improved to approach that of the real image (10 to 3 times brighter than SDR).
Le HDR 10 is an even more powerful brightness and contrast management system that allows you to choose the best "tone" for an entire film. But the problem will be that some scenes may be poorly optimized. the HDR10 + will choose the best light tone for each scene of a film for optimal rendering over the entire duration of the film. HDR10 and HDR10 + are “open source” formats.
Le Dolby Vision is the equivalent of HDR10, but in a proprietary format. On the other hand, it is more sensitive than HDR10 and based on human vision. It is well suited to 4K and 8K and most current TVs can only reproduce a tenth of the contrast range of Dolby Vision.