One Friday in March, I had a missed call from a number I didn’t recognise I was at lunch earlier and didn’t have my phone on me, and being wary of all the pervasive spam calls that are flying around, I was in a split mind whether to call back.
After a minute of deliberation, I decided to call back and a clearly frazzled representative answers, themselves only just finishing their lunch and heading back to their desk. I explain that I missed a call approximately an hour ago, identifying myself by name.
It was at this point, it seemed the pieces dropped into place, as the representative explained that they are from element14 and had called me to deliver some good news – that I had won a prize in one of their promotions. They weren’t entirely clear about which one … but they did need my address and phone number to ship the prize and being the trustworthy person I am, I gave it to them, telling them that this news had made my day.
A bit more than a week later … a box arrives for me, making my day once again.
How Did This Happen?!
As it turns out, this was part of a competition game they were running over the Summer (in Australia). This game involved a fictional city called “Thermopolis” and working to substitute “tiles” of the map with more sustainable, environmentally-friendly alternatives to save the city.
As a Photovoltaic and Solar Energy Engineering graduate, I expected myself to do well, but I was disappointed as it took me a few tiles to learn the conventions of the game where I would have lost some points. Also, being a bit of a “loner” that doesn’t want to spam people, I knew I wouldn’t win any referral points either. I really wasn’t expecting anything out of it, but thought it was an interesting game nonetheless.
The representative told me over the phone I had won an Amazon FireTV Stick – a media consumption device that you can attach to any TV to turn it into an Amazon-flavour SmartTV. It’s a nifty gadget to have, especially if you travel or have an ancient TV (the latter definitely applies to me).
Delving into the terms and conditions, it seems this means that I somehow came 5th place for the Australia division. I think that’s pretty amazing.
A Box Arrives
It’s an early morning and I’m not at home. Luckily a family member is home and receives a package from our friendly local TOLL driver.
The package is shipped inside a satchel from our local Australian element14 branch and contains a box with an “invoice”.
But of course, the invoice is not an invoice … but a letter of congratulations!
First name / last name confusions aside, it’s always nice to have a hand-signed letter.
Inside, the picking label is another instance of “GOODS”. My second time receiving “goods to the value of …”
This one is the latest FireTV Stick 4K Max which supports HDR and Wi-Fi 6. It almost feels embarrassing to say, I’m still a Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) person – there just hasn’t been any compelling need for me to upgrade to 802.11ax just yet.
The box was a bit crushed by the time it reached me. Nonetheless, the sides indicate the availability of Alexa voice control and the fact the unit has a four-core CPU. It comes with two AAA batteries for the remote and an HDMI extender cable for those tight spots behind some TVs. It does need high speed internet with Wi-Fi and an HDMI input on a TV … both of which I can satisfy.
This one appears to be local stock, although Made in China. There is an electronic anti-steal sticker on the underside.
Things are arranged neatly inside, almost as if in a desk organiser. While there’s a lot of ecologically sensible cardboard in the packaging …
… it seems they still can’t get away from plastic. At least everything that’s been promised is included – including a quick start leaflet. The batteries are “AmazonBasics Industrial”. Even the power adapter is Amazon branded.
The adapter is rated for just 9W output and carries the Australian Regulatory Compliance Mark making it legal for sale in Australia. It should be an efficient one with a VI efficiency mark.
The remote is rather sleek and feels nice in the hand with good balance – that’s because the batteries are distributed along the length of the remote. The back of the plastic bag has a diagram showing you how to insert the batteries, just in case you couldn’t figure it out.
While it is a modern device, it does come with a rather ordinary USB-A to USB-micro-B cable. No USB-C in 2023? How unfortunate!
The bag around the FireTV Stick itself warns you to use the original power adapter – a good idea because it’s similar to the Raspberry Pi in needing a consistent and stable source of power to operate reliably. Using third party devices may not guarantee such stable power.
The device also has an Australian Regulatory Compliance Mark which is great stuff. Assembled in China, it expects a 5.25V input at up to 1A – that makes a surprisingly low 5.25W maximum consumption for a quad-core SoC that can decode H.265 4k HDR video. That is very impressive.
The power connection is “mid-ship” on one side … perhaps not the best configuration for a tight spot behind a TV as it might clash with an adjacent port or put some leverage on the HDMI connector. Thankfully, there is an extension cable for a bit more wriggle room.
Under the Covers
I always like to inspect electronics as soon as they arrive – if they don’t seem to be too hard to pull apart, I’d do it right away. Surprisingly, even though the FireTV Stick looked relatively solid, the plastic is pliable enough to disassemble simply using the power of my fingers!
Most of the PCB is covered with an aluminium heat spreader, and the inside of the case is covered with copper tape in that area. This keeps the heat in check – important for such a small device. Self-adhesive foam with conductive fabric is used to bond the heats spreader with the copper tape, likely forming a shield to ensure EMC compliance. Antennas for Wi-Fi/Bluetooth appear to be PCB-printed. But do you spot that rectangular thing? That’s a GPS antenna and they’ve wisely not shielded it. Now why would a TV-box type device need a GPS antenna? It doesn’t seem documented anywhere in their literature, and it is of concern to me.
I feel this is a bit of “overreach” – perhaps it’s to avoid NTP clock shenanigans for extending the validity on rented content, perhaps it’s to get location to break geoblocking circumvention mechanisms (e.g. VPNs). But I somehow don’t feel comfortable that Amazon can know the precise “to the 10m level” location of my device, along with whatever I’m watching.
That being said, there are many TV ports which are oriented badly for GPS reception and many sets are located in places where GPS cannot be received. I have a feeling that it is not absolutely required for operation, after all, people are not usually going navigating with their FireTV Stick and I can’t see Amazon asking users to “move their TV so they can get GPS” … so perhaps the best course of action is to desolder the antenna entirely. That will make it extremely difficult to get GPS – if it’s not powered, shorting the two pins may even be better.
Extracting the board from the rear case, we see the back is also covered with a heat spreader – it literally is a heat spreader sandwich!
The rear doesn’t have much, but it’s clear they really wanted the GPS to work by keeping all the noisy stuff away from the antenna. You could almost cut the PCB along a straight line and remove the GPS stuff … but given the antenna is soldered in through-hole, removal might be fairly easy.
Unfortunately, as the heat spreaders are not easily removed and there are cans below that, I decided not to tear it apart any further, especially as I haven’t even gotten any use out of it yet!
Set-Up and User Experience
I did perform the set-up process which involves connecting to a Wi-Fi access point, updates … a lot of updates …
… binding to an Amazon account, trying to determine the IR profile for the connected TV, installing a few useful apps, updating apps that are already installed and updating the firmware of the remote control.
It wasn’t difficult, but it was a bit time consuming. In the end, not being a streaming fanatic, being on LTE “quota-limited” connections as my primary method of connectivity, I prefer offline viewing. Unfortunately, the FireTV Stick is designed for streaming, so there’s no direct attachment possible. But at least VLC is available, meaning playing from network shares works just fine. Furthermore, it does support screen mirroring as well, so at least it could be used as a Miracast display.
It is surprising to me just how little active power it is rated to use – 5.2W is really not much power for what it’s doing. But even more surprising is the fact the dongle itself doesn’t have a “power off” option in any menu – it just remains in “sleep”. I prefer powering off my devices (physically) by detaching them from the power socket … I don’t think that’s a good thing to do to the device as it may lead to data corruption over time.
With regards to performance – while updates are a bit slow, general usage is snappy enough not to be frustrating. Considering that the device is being sold at a rather reasonable AU$70, one cannot expect $1000-level smartphone performance out of it. The UI is fairly intuitive and even spartan at times, which is perhaps also because they would like you to use voice control through Alexa. I’m not a fan of talking to my electronics, but unfortunately, there’s no clear toggle to disable the microphone. It seems we just have to take it for granted that no microphones are active when it is not called upon with the Alexa button on the remote.
Perhaps the biggest downside, especially to those who have been spoiled by the Google ecosystem, is the anaemic state of the Amazon AppStore which may be due to anti-competitive restrictions (i.e. “walled garden”). After all, Amazon likely does subsidise each device to some extent on the expectation that users may shop, buy subscriptions, or rent content that would otherwise net them revenue. Being able to use alternatives (e.g. GeForce Now, ad-blocking web browsers) is not in their interests, even though it is (as far as I know) Android-based. That does limit the usefulness of the device somewhat. Another side effect is that their AppStore seems to have quite a few questionable apps which seem less-than-professional. I’m not sure I’d trust them on my device.
Conclusion
I didn’t think that playing a little online game to learn about climate change would ever lead to anything, so thanks again element14 for making my day with another wonderful prize. It’s always good to have a chance to examine the latest consumer electronics. As for what Amazon is doing with the device, it seems rather spartan and easy to use, but the limitations in being in their rather limited walled garden makes it a distant-second to Google TV in my opinion. While the device performs fairly decently, when the price is considered, the update process is rather extensive and some of the functionality is less than intuitive to use (e.g. Miracast Mirroring needs to be enabled manually before you can cast to the device, rather than running in the background continuously). But perhaps the biggest concern I have is the GPS antenna on the device – what is it using the GPS for? I’m not sure it is in the consumer’s interest to have it – while it might help Amazon keep rightsholders satisfied that they’re doing as much as possible to lock down rentals and ensure geoblocking is respected, as a consumer, I don’t expect a TV stick that remains stationary most of its working life to need to determine my location to a very fine granularity and receive highly accurate time, perhaps even sending this away to Amazon. Perhaps one day we’ll hear of SWAT teams breaking down the doors of someone watching illegal content being “snitched on” by their FireTV Stick. As a result, perhaps desoldering the antenna is the best way going forward to preserve some privacy ...
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