If you own an Amazon Echo speaker and one of three select Fire TV devices, Amazon has a pretty sweet proposition for you: Spend $35 on its new Fire TV Blaster and you’ll be able to take command of your entire entertainment environment with just your voice.
The Fire TV Blaster takes the remarkable home theater control abilities of the Fire TV Cube and repackages them into an affordable add-on for folks who already own an Echo speaker, and a Fire TV Stick, Fire TV Stick 4K, or 3rd-gen Fire TV. Instead of tossing out or selling your old gear, you can get a lot more control for less than the price of a night out at the movie theater.
Among the home theater devices that can be controlled via the Fire TV Blaster are: TVs, soundbars, A/V receivers, and cable or satellite set-top boxes. The three-way match-up between an Echo speaker, a Fire TV device, and a Fire TV Blaster lets you say things like:
- “Alexa, turn off the TV,”
- “Alexa, turn up the soundbar volume”
- “Alexa, switch to HDMI 1 on TV”
- “Alexa, tune to ESPN on cable”
Amazon is touting the Fire TV Blaster not just as a way to use your voice for more activities, but also as an alternative to buying and/or using a 3rd-party universal remote control. After all, if you can configure the Blaster to control all of your various devices, who needs a coffee table full of remotes — or even any remote at all?
Given that a Fire TV device already gives you access to just about every streaming service imaginable including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, and of course Disney+, all you really need is to be able to control your cable box for the few shows you still watch using conventional channels. If the Fire TV Blaster proves as capable of bouncing IR signals around your media room as the Fire TV Cube, finding a place to put it shouldn’t be hard at all. It also comes with an IR extender cable to control any media equipment in a closed cabinet.
The $35 Fire TV Blaster goes up for pre-order today and starts shipping December 11. It will initially only be available in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
