the new Fire TV stick

[1/9/17] Took home the Fire Stick 2 last night.  First paired the voice remote to my Fire TV, then decided to plug in the Stick.

Mistake.  The stick didn't find the remote since I paired it with the Fire TV (I assume that was the problem).  And since I had set the stick to factory default at Aiea, it didn't find my network.  So I couldn't control the stick the app on my tablet.

What to do?  Look at the instructions.  Said to take out the batteries from the remote, then put it back.  I did that and after several seconds the remote was recognized.  (I think I might have had to press down home button too.)

Browsing around.  Still no Starz app.  But Bloomberg live worked (the live feed hasn't been working on my Fire TV, jumping back to the menu).

Then I got a notice to do an update.  After that, I got the new interface which still hasn't reached my Fire TV.

I suppose it's an improvement, but since it's new, I'm still used to the old one.  There's not that much that it does that the old one doesn't.  Mainly it looks a little more modern with bigger fonts.  One thing that I do like is that you are able to arrange your apps (like a Roku or Apple TV).  I wish it were able to also arrange your video library (it's currently in chronological order), but maybe that's coming in the next release.

[12/18/16] I guess Black Fridays work for Amazon because I found myself buying the new Fire TV stick even though I wasn't really using the old stick that much (I mostly use my first gen Fire TV).

It looks pretty much like the old Fire TV Stick, but is a little larger.

I booted it up hoping it would find my old remote, but it didn't.  Then I put in batteries in the new remote and it found both.

First off, I noticed the new remote feels a little stiffer.  It takes a bit more of a harder touch to move the cursor keys and press the OK button (or whatever they're officially called).  But it still might be an improvement.  I think I went through three remotes with my original Fire TV.  The first had trouble connecting or losing connection (probably chronicled below somewhere).  The current one had trouble with the right cursor.  You had to press it hard sometimes to get it to register.  And now that the kids have been using, it barely works at all.

The remote I've been using is the one that came with the Fire TV Stick that I bought last year [that's actually the main reason I bought the Fire TV stick -- for the remote].  I like it.  It has a good feel, but it's not a voice remote like the one that comes with the new Stick.

The next thing I noticed is that you can't adjust the screen from the device if your TV picture is too big.  Maybe they might fix it in the future.

The above was from on 12/1/16, but I didn't really bother to write it up since they were minor issues.

Then I noticed last night (12/17/16) when hooking it up at the Aiea house.  For some reason, I couldn't find Starz to install.  Even when you go to the amazon website, I didn't see the option to send it to my new Fire TV Stick, only to my Fire TV, (original) Fire TV stick, and Fire tablet.

After a period of frustration, I find that Starz is not compatible with the new Fire TV stick.  Quite odd.  We'll see how long they take to get it on the new stick.

it's a scam

“I said: ‘Your name is not Adam. What does your grandmother call you?’ He said, ‘Babu.’”

Babu was Jayesh Dubey, a skinny 19-year-old with hair gelled into vertical bristles, a little like a chimney brush. He told her that he was working in a seven-story building and that everyone there was engaged in the same activity: impersonating Internal Revenue Service officials and threatening Americans, demanding immediate payment to cover back taxes.

If they reached a person who was sufficiently terrified or gullible — this was known in the business as a “sale” — they would instruct that person to buy thousands of dollars’ worth of iTunes cards to avoid prosecution, they said; the most rattled among them complied. The victim would then send the codes from the iTunes cards to the swindlers, giving them access to the money on the card.

As it happened, the United States government had been tracking this India-based scheme since 2013, a period during which Americans, many of them recent immigrants, have lost $100 million to it.