Amazon Adds Annoying Streaming Service Buttons to Its Fire TV Remote

Amazon is coming out with a third generation of its Alexa voice remote, and includes unwanted new buttons that will take you to the Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney Plus, and Hulu apps. If you’re one of the people who subscribe to and use all of these exact streaming services on a regular basis, this remote could be a nice upgrade. But for everyone else, the buttons will only add friction and awkwardness to the Fire TV control experience.

We here at The edge have already explained why we don’t like these buttons. They turn your remote control into a permanent advertising canvas for services you might not even be using, and they take up space that could be used for buttons that take you to services you don’t. do use. If, for example, you don’t subscribe to Disney Plus or Hulu, the buttons are, at best, useless to you and, at worst, just waiting to be accidentally pressed, leaving you to quit an app begging you to subscribe. .

The obvious alternative is to make the buttons mappable to the services you use and not give them a permanent mark. If the remote came with four buttons that you could use to open your favorite streaming services, that would be a very different story. Alas, this is not the case. But hey, now the voice command button is an Alexa button for even more branding! (I concede it’s not that bad, considering it was already called Alexa Voice remote control.)

Image: Amazon

I don’t want to make it sound like a few boring buttons (which some people might actually find useful) are the end of the world or that this new remote doesn’t have any redemption quality. There’s actually another new button that takes you to a “guide” showing you a wired timeline of all the content available from your live providers, such as Sling, Hulu, or YouTube TV.

Unlike the branded ones, it’s small and not bright in color, so it’s easy to ignore it if you don’t need it (and it won’t be as prone to accidental pressure). I just wish the remote control makers would let us choose what features we want on our remotes, especially since the streaming service landscape is constantly changing and people have started to subscribe to a service for a few years. month, then move on to another.