Alright, you finally cut the cord
and you get yourself
an Amazon Fire device,
a Fire TV, a Fire Stick 4K, a Fire Cube,
whatever the case is.
Now you've got Amazon Fire TV ready to go.
And the good news is
whatever device you've got,
there's a ton of free content out there,
you don't have to now sign up
for a ton of paid services,
you can, but you don't have to.
So today we're gonna be talking about
my top 10 picks for free
content on your Amazon Fire TV,
let's dive in.
(upbeat music)
Before we get started,
if you are interested
in winning a 55-inch Insignia Smart TV,
powered by Amazon Fire TV,
you can check that out
in the description below.
There are contest rules,
you can get multiple entries for that.
So just hit the link in the description,
and enter to win that TV.
Now today for the Amazon Fire TV,
what we're gonna be doing
is going through the apps,
what I'm not gonna do
is do a whole tour of the interface,
I'm not gonna review
the devices themselves.
All I'm gonna be doing is looking
at our top 10 free apps.
So if you want to look for anything else,
hit this icon above me,
there are some other Amazon
Fire videos that we have,
if you want something in a
little bit different genre.
Now then, first thing I'll show
you is how to find your apps
here on the home screen,
we can go down here to
your apps and channels.
And if I click left,
I can see all so if I go through all this,
I've got to click through
absolutely everything
it takes forever. So I
can go all the way right
or just go click left and see all.
And here is kind of a grid
layout of all the apps
on the Amazon Fire TV,
I can also do that
by holding that home button on the remote.
And it shows me that
grid view for the apps.
So that's how I'm gonna be locating these.
If you want to download apps,
you're gonna come to the
Apps tab up here on the top.
And you can scroll through these
you'll notice there is
no search function here.
But what you can do is hold
down your voice search,
search the Tubi TV app,
so yeah you can search it that way.
Click in here and then you
can download an app this way.
So then it'll show up
in your list of apps.
Now that we know how to download apps,
let's go back to that grid view
and get started on our top 10 apps.
The first one is YouTube.
Now you might be saying
hang on that's obvious,
of course, YouTube, right?
Well, not necessarily
because it was actually just,
I want to say yesterday or the day before,
as we were recording this,
that YouTube is finally made available
on the Amazon Fire again.
There was a big spat
between Amazon and Google
and so they took their apps
off of each other's platforms,
but now they've kissed and made up.
So now you can get the YouTube
app on your Amazon Fire TV,
which is vital as far as I'm concerned.
This is obviously this
is where you get me.
So it's the most important app on your TV.
Once you get in there,
you can search everything,
just like you normally would on YouTube.
Alright, so now if we go back to our apps,
the next one is Express VPN,
this one is not an app that you're going
to find any content on.
But it's gonna be very
important if you use other apps
to view content that
depend on your location.
So for instance,
I do have one paid app
on here called MLB.TV.
And with this one or other
ones like it NBA TV, NHL TV,
what they do is you sign
up for their service.
And it allows you to view
all out of market games.
So in this case, all out
of market baseball games.
And if I wanted to view my hometown team,
it's not gonna let me do that.
But with something like Express VPN,
it's going to mask your location
or you can change the location
that you're streaming from
or that you're getting your data from.
So it can be very useful
for privacy reasons
and for reasons of other apps.
So this one is pretty vital,
although you're not gonna
find any content on it.
Next up is a few really
well known ones Sony crackle
and Pluto TV, numbers three and four.
Sony crackle is an
on-demand streaming service,
much like Netflix.
The difference here is
that it's ad-supported.
And so it's free stuff.
So if I come in here to Sony crackle.
So now that I've opened it up,
I can log in if I wanna create an account
and kind of save all my
stuff, or I can skip that
and just go right into browsing for stuff.
So as you can see, it's structured
quite a bit like Netflix
with different genres
that you can go through
and see movies.
So I mean, you can see some
pretty great movies on here,
"Concussion", "Whiplash",
that sort of thing.
But once you get in there and watch a show
it is going to be ad-supported.
So that's something to consider.
Next up Pluto TV is an
ad-supported live TV network.
And so Pluto TV gives
you over 100 channels
that you can browse through,
it's got a lot of great shows and movies.
This is where you're gonna
find a lot of kind of,
I would call it B team
content from Viacom channels.
So we're talking to MTV,
BET that sort of thing.
Viacom actually purchased this.
That's why there's so
much Viacom stuff on here.
But you can get movies, TV shows,
Stadium is a sports network
where you can check out some, you know,
off the beaten path
stuff, but it's all free.
It's just ad-supported,
much like Sony crackle.
Next up one of my favorites,
I found this one while
I was searching around
for fun stuff to watch.
NASA has a streaming network
Who would have thought and
quite frankly, it's brilliant.
If you're into NASA stuff,
if you like space stuff,
then come in here and
you can watch NASA live,
they've got latest images and
videos that they've uploaded.
You can check out this content
where they will interview astronauts,
I was just watching a program
where they were
interviewing the astronauts
on the space station so all
of this stuff is on here.
And it is fantastic.
If this is the kind of
content that you go for.
This app is wonderful.
Next up is another big surprise.
I discovered this one when I was looking
for apps for the Apple TV.
Luckily, it's available
on the Fire TV as well.
Viki is Asian TV that is subtitled by fans
by you know mega fans,
so they translate it
and subtitle it and put it
on here for you to watch.
And so there are lots of great you know,
kind of comedies and dramas, action stuff,
really soapy Asian stuff, it's fantastic.
So if you're looking for something,
kind of off that beaten
path, look up, Viki.
It's delightful.
Next up, Hoopla and
Kanopy are kind of lumped
into the same category.
These are library based apps.
And what I mean by that is
their public library apps,
you can go into Kanopy and log in
with your local library card.
And their most local libraries
are gonna be signed up either for Kanopy
or Hoopla mine is through Kanopy.
And so I can go in here
and watch some awesome movies, frankly,
they are really high quality stuff.
If you have a library card,
this is a no-brainer
free content just based
on your library card.
Next up Ted, you're
probably familiar with this.
But you may not know that they have an app
where they've gathered
all of their content.
So you can go through
based on topics or whatever
and check out TED Talks.
If you enjoy TED Talks,
again, this is a no-brainer.
All right, and lastly,
we have PBS and PBS Kids.
Now these ones are interesting
because they do have you log
in via an interesting way.
If I go into PBS, it
asks me to activate that.
So I'm gonna lean over to my laptop here
and activate it using
the code that they give,
you guys can't see what
I'm doing right now.
But once I get in there,
it asks me to verify
that with the you know,
log in using Facebook
or something like that.
But once you're in you
get ton of PBS content,
the reason it has you log in
is because it's going to base
it on your local PBS station.
And so if you have local
stuff that you want to watch,
it's going to show up on this app.
Similarly, when you go into PBS Kids,
it'll have you do the same activation.
Obviously, if you have kids,
this is a must have,
my kids love "Daniel
Tiger's Neighborhood",
I can sing you all the songs all of them.
Now, these are apps that are all available
in the Amazon Fire TV app store.
So you can download them all directly.
Now there are a lot of other apps,
if you go search online for
the best apps for Fire TV,
you're gonna find a lot
of things like Cinema APK,
CyberFlix, Titanium TV,
these are apps that allow
you to pull in content
that is of,
(clears throat)
shall we say questionable legality.
And so I'm not gonna
go through those apps,
but you can side load them.
That's one nice thing
about the Amazon Fire TV
is that you can side load apps.
And I'll show you what I mean by that.
If you go up here to your
settings, and over to My Fire TV,
then down here in Developer Options,
Apps from Unknown Sources,
it should come by default it says off.
But if you come in here and turn it on,
then this means that you
can now download apps
from unknown sources.
And so if I go now and say,
search for the downloader app,
there are a few apps like
this one like Downloader
that will allow you to find apps
that aren't available
on Amazon Fire's store.
And so you can get some things
that are of questionable
legality, like I said,
and so we kind of steer away
from showing you everything about that.
But one thing that it does,
that's really nice is gaming.
And so you can get NES and SNES emulators
and play them with Bluetooth controllers.
It's really great.
I'm just not gonna go through this
because those things aren't available
in the Amazon Fire TV app store.
So if you have any other
questions about apps that we like,
or if you have any app recommendations,
hit the comments below and let us know
and let everybody else know as well.
We'll be up voting and
hearting those comments
that have great content ideas.
So hit those comment and as a reminder,
don't forget that we are giving away
an Amazon Fire 55-inch Smart TV.
So hit the description,
there's a link there
where you can see how to win that TV
that's going through July 26th.
And so if you're interested in that,
go check out that contest.
There are lots of ways
to enter to win that
so thanks for watching guys.
I will see you on the next review.
(upbeat music)
