Google Chromecast vs Amazon Fire TV Stick

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When it comes to streaming TV and Video On Demand, I'm a bit late to the party. Sure, I watch YouTube videos on my computer, iPad and phone, but never before on the actual telly. And the reasons for that? Well firstly I'm not a big consumer of TV - I might watch an hour or two each night, or none - I'm just as happy to read a book. And secondly, we don't have a smart TV and I really didn't understand how it works.

But here we are, just getting used to the idea of it being the 21st Century, and now the proud owner owner of not one, but two streaming TV devices. You might think that's a bit excessive, and so do I. Here's what happened...

Many moons ago now, Amazon announced it had commissioned a 6-part dramatisation of Good Omens by the late, great Pterry Pratchett and the admirable Neil Gaiman. Others have tried to bring Terry's novels to the screen, but missed the mark by about a million miles - somehow the people involved just didn't get it. But this time it would be different - it was being written and executive produced by Neil Gaiman himself. Surely he gets it. I signed up for Amazon Prime, which apart from giving you access to tons of streaming content, also gets you next day delivery, sometimes same day. You could get used to that. I certainly did. But after a few months I started getting concerned sounding emails from Amazon, reminding me about Prime Video and wondering why I hadn't used it. The truth is, I didn't know how, but as the launch date for Good Omens approached - OK, 2 days before - I decided I'd better find out how.

So, you need a dongle that plugs into a HDMI socket on your TV and connects to your home wifi network. There are many available, but I decided to go for a name I'd heard of. It came down to a choice between the Google Chromecast at £30 and the Amazon Fire TV Stick at £40. Being a born-and-bred cheapskate, I opted for the cheaper one.

Google Chromecast 

The Chromecast is very easy to set up - you simply plug the dongle into an HDMI socket on your TV, plug one end of the supplied USB cable into the dongle and the other either goes into a USB socket on your TV, or if that doesn't supply enough power, into a mains socket. The software side all happens via apps on your phone. You need the Google Cast app to set up your wifi connection. Confusingly, you need a different app, Google Home to actually operate the TV, get any content providers' apps etc. It all seemed to work until I tried to get the Amazon Prime Video app and found it wasn't supported by Chromecast. Given that my sole reason for buying this thing was to watch a series on Prime Video, this was somewhat disappointing. It is possible to use Prime Video on your phone and then cast the image of the phone onto your TV - this kind of worked, but we didn't get any audio when I tried it. So we ended up watching Good Omens on the computer. Using the Chromecast subsequently, we did get audio, so I don't really know what happened there.

Some Time Later...

It was Amazon's Prime Day. The Fire TV Stick with Alexa Remote was reduced from £40 to £19.99. It was a no-brainer. I couldn't have hit that 'Buy Now' button any quicker if I'd tried.

Amazon Fire TV Stick

I struggled a bit with the packaging of the Fire TV. They've designed an origami-like container made of one piece of thin black card - no nasty non-recyclable moulded things, but I found it tricky to open, and hard to remove the batteries for the remote without tearing the paper. The Fire TV stick is quite a bit more substantial than the Chromecast. It's a longish rectangular thing with the HDMI plug sticking out at one end. Realising that this may not fit with the space available around the HDMI sockets of many TVs,
Amazon provide a short extender cable. Power to the Fire stick is the same deal as the Chromecast - USB or mains.
But the thing that makes the Fire TV Stick stand out is the Alexa voice-enabled remote control. It's beautiful. Sleek black plastic with only a handful of buttons. And the reason it can have such a minimal button count is that you're going to talk to Alexa instead of hunting around through dozens of buttons. However, the gracefulness of the design is badly let down by the battery compartment cover. They've managed to design it so that this is almost impossible to remove. I struggled with it for at least five minutes before the case relaxed its iron grip on the cover. I do hope these batteries are long-life.
Once you've installed the hardware, you switch on your TV and the stick finds the remote and begins the process. You need to give it your wifi password, sign in with your Amazon creds, and do a few other things. Now, I'm normally a forgiving kind of chap, but I'm never going to forgive Amazon for their on-screen keyboard. You navigate it by using the ring to go left/right or up/down, and press the middle of the ring to select the character you want. But for some reason Amazon has designed a series of mini-screens - one each for upper and lowercase letters, one for numbers, another for special characters. To switch between them you have to navigate to the appropriate button in the bottom left of the screen. If you've chosen passwords that use a mix of all those character types, like you're supposed to, you're in for a long and frustrating period of keyboard navigation. Fingers crossed you don't make any mistakes. What is doubly, or even triply annoying about this is that you are viewing it on a TV screen - there's plenty of room for a keyboard layout that includes all the characters you need. But step back from that. You're doing this on a voice-enabled remote! It's crazy that you can't just tell Alexa what characters to enter.
I'll stop griping now, because once you've got it all setup, using it is a breeze. You'll need to install apps for the channels you want to watch (oh, sorry, another gripe - I couldn't find any way to search for apps). Alternatively you can log into your Amazon account on a computer, find the apps you want and sideload them to the stick.
Once you get past all the trauma of setting it up, using the Fire TV stick with the voice remote is a joy.  I understand that the actual capabilities offered are dependent on how well, or indeed if, Alexa has been integrated into the app you're using. No more trying to type in the name of a show on an old-fashioned remote control. Now you just say 'Alexa, play Good Omens on Prime Video'. And she'll show you what she's found.


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