Hello.
If you’ve never heard of a Fire Stick before, it’s something you can use to turn a normal TV into a “smart” TV, and you can watch online “catch up” programmes on it.
They’re made by Amazon and you do need to have an Amazon account to use one, but you don’t need to have signed up for Amazon Prime (which you pay a monthly subscription for). You just won’t be able to watch the bits that are exclusive to Prime customers unless you are one.
A Fire Stick plugs into the back of your TV, and it comes with a remote control to… erm… control it. In general they’re pretty easy to use, but the remote control doesn’t have many buttons on it, so it’s not exactly obvious at first what to do. Once you know, it’s pretty easy though!
We’ve had quite a few questions over the years about how to use them, so Tim recorded this little video, because it’s the kind of thing that’s easier to explain by showing you. It’s a couple of years old, but Fire Sticks still work the same as they did then, so it’s all still relevant.
It’s not Hollywood production levels, of course – it was just recorded in Tim’s lounge. But it should help make it clearer how to control your Fire Stick if you have one or are thinking of getting one. If you have a different type of Smart TV, it might be helpful, too, as the principles are similar – though then it won’t work in exactly the same way.
Press play on the video below to watch…
If you have any questions, let us know
Mike 🙂
January 31, 2018 at 4:00 pm
At the end of watching whatever film/program How do you SWITCH OFF the Fire Stick ?
February 1, 2018 at 9:28 am
Hi John,
Thanks for your query, you can’t physically switch it off so I usually just unplug it from the power source when I’m done. You can also switch the input channel on your TV to a different channel too.
I hope this helps,
Thanks
Jess
February 1, 2018 at 3:15 pm
Hi Jess,
Thought that may be the case after ‘ previously trying all the ‘Buttons’. However, many thanks for the answer.
Kind Regards,
John.
February 1, 2018 at 4:34 pm
Hi John,
Not a problem, I’ve had times where I’ve switched from watching something on the Firestick and then watching something on SKY and then suddenly the Firestick menu appears on the screen which gets a bit annoying. I usually just unplug it to stop this from happening.
Jess 🙂
December 28, 2017 at 10:06 am
Hallo Mike
For the last few of your newsletters where a video is presented for viewing, all I have is an empty space – although the first video you made (“Soulful)” worked OK.
I do not appear to have problems with other videos or attachments so I wonder if you can throw light on this please?
Please note – I did query this problem before by email when your book “Facebook – One step at a time” was apparently being highlighted.
Do I now need to use Chrome or Firefox instead of Windows?
Many thanks – Maurice
January 2, 2018 at 10:57 am
Hi Maurice,
Thanks so much for letting us know, I’m so sorry if you didn’t get a reply to your first question about this, I’m not sure where that has gone to.
Let me see if we can sort this out for you.
I’ve updated the video page with a direct link to the video on YouTube as sometimes the video only plays if you click through to YouTube directly which you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnlL-XKq7kA
Give that YouTube link a click and see if that works for you? If it does/doesn’t let me know and we can go from there.
You might be interested in my recent article on why it’s time to stop using Internet Explorer, read more here. If you need a hand just drop me a message and we can talk it through 🙂 .
Let me know how you get on and we can go from there, I’m also going to add a direct link to the YouTube version of the video for anyone else who is having these problems.
Many thanks.
Mike 🙂