The Verge Reviews the $140 Amazon Fire TV Cube

Chris Welch writing for The Verge, “A Streaming Box With No Equal”:

Advertising across Fire TV OS remains way more in your face than I’d like. When the Cube is left idle and goes into screensaver mode, you’ll see promoted movies and TV shows, sure, but there are also ads for Lexus cars. At the top of the homescreen over the last few days, there’s been a banner ad for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, which doesn’t even seem relevant to the platform outside of Twitch streams. And ads are now taking up room in the live channel guide, which is frustrating some Fire TV owners. When you’re perusing through the carousels of content on the homescreen, Amazon’s own selections still get the lion’s share of promotion. The latter shouldn’t come as a surprise on the company’s own hardware, but the dial really needs to be turned down on the rest. It cheapens the whole user experience and feels unwarranted on a $140 product. Ads are inevitable on $40 streaming sticks; that’s how they’re so affordable in the first place. But Amazon should be able to detect when customers have paid a premium for the Fire TV Cube and pull it back.

No equal indeed. The Apple TV streaming boxes don’t have any ads at all. They’re way behind. (Maybe I shouldn’t give Apple any ideas about putting annoying ads in tvOS.)

★ Monday, 31 October 2022