Amazon Fire Cube

[Sonnie]

Anyone using Amazon Fire Cube?

Considering it for my HT room to get Dish Anywhere and save $7 per month on the Joey, although it equates to over 17 months of Joey rentals.

I may get two more cheap Fire Sticks for the other two Joeys and save $21 per month total.

I really like the Roku, but I can't get Dish Anywhere with anything other than Amazon Fire products due to an exclusive Dish has with Amazon.

My other option is to get rid of Dish and keep the Roku... started another thread about programming.

 

[skid00]

I've been using variations of them for more than 6 years. I am a 'Prime' member, so get free content. What questions do you have?

 

[Sonnie]

I was mainly curious as to how it compared to Roku Ultra 2020, which is what I use now. The main reason I would switch is for Dish Anywhere, so that I don't have to rent a box and actually own it. But I may do away with Dish if I can get a combo package with the other providers that will give us all the channels we want.

I ordered one to check it out. Free returns with Amazon, so I'll give it a try and see how it compares.

 

[phillihp23]

I have three fire cubes and 5 firestick 4k.
The fire cube is superior to the firestick. Also I understand they won’t be updating firmware to version 7 on fire stick 4k ? Which will limit quality for some services that require the new firmware version. I use fire cube in living room, bedroom and home theater. Firestick 4k in guest bedroom, workout room, bar area and patio.

 

[Sonnie]

What makes the Fire Cube superior... more features? And does it have a different interface/UI?

 

[phillihp23]

Also Firestick 4k max releases next month.

https://www.aftvnews.com/amazon-ann...4k-max-with-improved-performance-and-wi-fi-6/

 

[phillihp23]

 

[skid00]

What makes the Fire Cube superior... more features? And does it have a different interface/UI?

The cube is more powerful, will respond noticeably faster, and might have a slightly different GUI. (Our Cube, CL1130 (pancake?) and stick are all different OS versions). The cube seems to buffer more video, so can fast-forward quicker, or go thru GUI lists quicker.

 

[Sonnie]

Thanks for the info guys... very helpful. Looking forward to giving it a try.

 

[jmorris644]

Almost OT question: I searched the Dish web sites. Is a package available where you do not need to get the dish hardware?

 

[Sonnie]

Almost OT question: I searched the Dish web sites. Is a package available where you do not need to get the dish hardware?

Well... you'd have to have at least one of their receivers, then you can add Amazon "Fire" devices that will stream Dish Anywhere, but the direct answer is no, you can't get it without any hardware whatsoever, or at least that is what I was told by the Dish rep (which is about like a box of chocolates, if you know what I mean).

 

[jmorris644]

Well... you'd have to have at least one of their receivers, then you can add Amazon "Fire" devices that will stream Dish Anywhere, but the direct answer is no, you can't get it without any hardware whatsoever, or at least that is what I was told by the Dish rep (which is about like a box of chocolates, if you know what I mean).

Thanks. That was what I was afraid of. Like you, we have multiple Roku's in the house. We tried Sling but had trouble with the live TV receiver. So we ended up with Youtube TV. I have experienced that the Roku's, even the 4K ones, are not fast enough for high-level 4K streaming. Even from a local source. So I use an Apple4K tv in my theater.

I also had issues streaming similar content with Fire Sticks. So I abandoned those as well.

The main reason that I do not like YoutubeTV is that they do not have the tennis channel. I am an avid tennis player.

 

[Sonnie]

Got the Fire Cube connected and Dish Anywhere going.

Comparing Dish Anywhere to the Joey 4K receiver....

The quality of ABC football (Washington vs Michigan) on Dish Anywhere on the Fire Cube is actually better than on the Joey 4K. The letters on the Joey are jagged using the Joey 4K and players have halos and pic is somewhat fuzzy... very odd from what I'm used to seeing I think. On the Fire Cube with Dish Anywhere is cleaner, although I can tell that fast motion is funky looking and the overall pic is softer than I like. Same when comparing ESPN.

Now the bad... changing channels is deathly slow in actually acquiring the channel. And apparently there is no way to have a favorite channel list in the guide... all channels are always shown, or I can select Movies, Sports, etc, but no favorites. Icons in the DVR list that represent the shows are extremely large and have to scroll to see all the shows.

As for the Fire Cube... the interface seems nice thus far. Not sure if I like it better than the Roku yet, but I do like that when viewing Amazon Prime choices it plays a mini-trailer like on Netflix.

 

[phillihp23]

Fire TV Cube 2 is on sale $75 lowest price ever.