Connecting your antenna

Your antenna comes with a coaxial cable that you attach to the corresponding port on your TV, which is usually labelled Antenna (or just Ant) and/or Cable (or Cable In), as shown in Figure 5-1.

Now position the antenna. For a rooftop or attic antenna, you’re probably getting the antenna mounted by a professional. For a simpler indoor antenna, mount the device on or close to the nearest window and try to angle the antenna toward the broadcast signals you most want to pick up. (Again, see Chapter 10 to learn how to figure out which directions your available signals are coming from.)

Scanning for channels

With your antenna connected, your next chore is to ask Fire TV to scan for the available channels. Here are the steps to follow:

1. One your Fire TV Edition device, choose Settings ⇒ Live TV.

   If you don’t see the Live TV setting, then it means you’re using a Fire TV device which, as I mention earlier, doesn’t support live TV. To see the Live TV setting, you must be using a Fire TV Edition device.

2. Choose Channel Scan.

   Fire TV tells you to make sure your antenna is connected and positioned where you want it.

3. You’ve done all that, so say “Check!” and choose Next.

   Fire TV begins scanning the antenna connection for signals and displays its progress, as shown in Figure 5-2.

   When the scan is complete, Fire TV shows you how many channels it found, as shown in Figure 5-3.

   If Fire TV found far fewer channels than you expected, reposition the antenna and then choose Rescan to try again.

4. Choose Done.

   Your live TV channels are ready to view.

Checking channel signal strength

As shown in Figure 5-3, when you scan for Live TV channels, Fire TV tells you how many channels it found, but it says nothing about the strength of each channel’s signal. Sure, you’re free to tweak the position of your antenna and rescan to get more channels, but all you’re doing is maxing out the number of channels. You may prefer to get the best signal you can for those channels you actually watch regularly.

Fortunately, Fire TV can tell you the signal strength of each channel that it found, which means you can check the signal for each channel that you’ll be watching frequently. Here are the steps to follow:

1. On your Fire TV Edition device, choose Settings ⇒ Live TV ⇒ Channel Management ⇒ Antenna Channels.

   Fire TV displays the Antenna Channels screen and selects the All tab, which shows a list of the channels Fire TV found during the scan.

   To navigate the All, Favorites, and Hidden tabs, press the Left and Right buttons on the Alexa Voice Remote navigation ring.

2. Select the channel you want to check.

   On the right side of the screen, Fire TV displays a preview of the channel and the Signal Strength value: good, poor, or unavailable. Figure 5-4 shows an example.

3. If the channel preview is bad quality and/or the Signal Strength value is poor, try repositioning the HDTV antenna until you get a good signal.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for the other channels you want to check.

If your antenna channels appear distorted or otherwise not as nice to look at as you’d like, Fire TV Edition offers several settings that can help. To adjust the picture, choose Settings ⇒ Display & Sounds ⇒ Picture Settings ⇒ Antenna. Fire TV switches to a live TV channel and displays the Picture settings, including Picture Mode, Contrast, and Brightness. To adjust the display, choose Settings ⇒ Display & Sounds ⇒ Display Settings ⇒ Antenna. Fire TV switches to a live TV channel and displays the Display settings, which include the display aspect ratio.

Adding a live TV channel to your favorites

As I discuss later (see “Navigating the live TV channel guide”), Fire TV creates a channel guide to help you navigate all your live TV channels. That guide has a section for your antenna channels, as well as a section for each live TV app you’ve installed (plus yet another section for your Fire TV Recast channels; see Chapter 7). That’s a lot of sections, so locating the channel you want can be a hassle.

Yep, you can quickly tune directly to any channel using a voice instruction (see Chapter 9), but voice isn’t always convenient or possible. Another way to make the channel guide more efficient is to mark one or more channels as favorites, which then handily appear at the top of the channel guide (in a section labeled Favorite Channels; see Figure 5-5) for easy access.

On your Fire TV Edition device, there are two methods you can use to mark a channel as a favorite:

• Choose Settings ⇒ Live TV ⇒ Channel Management, choose your live TV source (such as Antenna Channels), highlight the channel you want to work with, and then press the Select button to add the channel to the favorites list.

  To use Settings to remove a channel from Favorites, highlight it either on the All tab or on the Favorites tab (see Figure 5-4), and then press the Select button.

• Highlight the channel you want to work on the Home tab (in the Recent row or in the On Now row), the Live tab, or the channel guide, press the Menu button on your Alexa Voice Remote, and then choose Add to Favorite Channels in the shortcut menu that appears.

  To remove a channel from Favorites, highlight it in the channel guide’s Favorite Channels section (or elsewhere in the Fire TV interface), press the Menu button, and then choose Remove from Favorite Channels in the shortcut menu.

Hiding a live TV channel or app

If there are live TV stations that you never watch, you can make the channel guide easier and quicker to navigate by hiding those unwatched stations. On your Fire TV Edition device, there are two methods you can use:

• Choose Settings ⇒ Live TV ⇒ Channel Management, choose your live TV source (such as Antenna Channels), highlight the channel you want to work with, and then press the Play/Pause button.

  To show a hidden channel, either highlight the channel in the All tab and press Play/Pause, or highlight the channel in the Hidden tab (see Figure 5-4) and press Select.

• Highlight the channel you want to hide on the Home tab (in the Recent row or in the On Now row), the Live tab, or the channel guide, press the Menu button on your Alexa Voice Remote, and then choose Hide Channel in the shortcut menu that appears.

Filtering live TV channels

Depending on what you have connected to your TV and which live TV apps you have installed, your live TV lineup may be quite long, making the channel guide cumbersome to navigate. Chances are, there are lots of channels you never view, so one solution would be to hide those channels, as I describe in the preceding section.

Hiding channels works fine, but it can be a time-consuming chore if you have lots of channels you want to hide. An often better solution is to filter the channel guide to show only those channels from one of the following channel types:

• Sources: Shows only those channels that you receive from a particular live TV source, such as Antenna Channels or Fire TV Recast Channels.
• Apps: Shows only those channels that are available through a particular app.
• Favorites: Shows only those channels that you’ve added to your Favorites list.

Follow these steps on your Fire TV device to filter the channel guide:

1. Display the channel guide.

   See “Navigating the live TV channel guide,” later in this chapter.

2. On your Fire TV remote, press Menu.

   Fire TV displays the Options menu for the channel guide.

3. Choose Filter Channels.

   Fire TV displays the Filter menu, which contains a list of possible filters. Figure 5-6 shows an example.

4. Choose the filter you want to use.

   Fire TV updates the channel guide to show only the channels in the filter you chose.

Seeing what’s on now

When your Fire TV device has one or more live TV services, the Home screen sprouts a new row titled On Now, shown in Figure 5-7. The On Now row shows thumbnail views of the current live TV shows. Use your Fire TV remote’s navigation ring to scroll right and left through the shows in the On Now list. For each show you land on, Fire TV displays the name, start and stop times, and a brief description. When you land on a show you want to watch, press the Select button.

To return to the On Now list, you have two ways to go:

• If you want to return to the Home screen’s On Now row, press the Back button on the Fire TV remote.
• If you want to keep watching the current show, press the Down button on your Fire TV remote’s navigation ring to display the On Now shows at the bottom of the screen. Press Up on the navigation ring to hide the On Now shows.

Navigating the live TV channel guide

The On Now row that I discuss in the preceding section is handy, but what if you want to know not only what’s on right now, but also what’s coming up later today, tomorrow, or next week? To peer into the future of your live TV sources, you need to use Fire TV’s channel guide. To get there, you have three choices:

• On the Home screen, navigate down to the On Now row; then press the Left button on the navigation ring to reveal the Guide button, shown in Figure 5-8, and choose Guide.
• Highlight any show in the On Now row, press the Fire TV remote’s Menu button, and then choose Channel Guide.
• On your Fire TV Edition remote, press the Channel Guide button.

The channel guide (see Figure 5-9) is divided into sections. If you’ve added one or more channels to your Favorites list, you see the Favorite Channels section at the top of the guide. You also see sections for each live TV source (such as Antenna Channels), and for each live TV app.

The channel guide grid displays the current date and a timeline. The channels themselves display a name and a logo on the far left, followed by the currently airing show. Here are the techniques you can use to navigate the channel guide:

• Use your Fire TV remote’s Down and Up navigation buttons to scroll vertically through the live shows; then press Select to tune to the show you want to watch. To return to the channel guide, press the Back button on the Fire TV remote.
• Use your Fire TV remote’s Right and Left navigation buttons to scroll horizontally through the upcoming shows. You can press Select to learn more about any show. To return to the channel guide, press the Back button on the Fire TV remote.

On your Fire TV remote, press Fast Forward to skip ahead one day in the channel guide, and press Rewind to skip back one day.

Checking out the Live tab

As an alternative to the channel guide, you can select the Live tab in the Fire TV Home menu bar. The Live screen that appears (see Figure 5-10) contains a Recent Channels row, which is a list of the live TV channels you’ve viewed most recently. Below that you see a row with some suggested live TV apps and rows that integrate live events under the headings Live Sports and Breaking News. The rest of the Live screen contains rows for your live TV sources (such as Antenna Channels), Fire TV Recast OTA shows, and any live TV apps you’ve installed.

As this book went to press, the Live tab was available only to Fire TV customers in the United States and Germany. When asked, Amazon said the Live tab will be coming to other countries in the near future.

Controlling live TV playback

Your Fire TV Edition Smart TV isn’t a digital video recorder (DVR), but it does offer several DVR-like features that can improve your live TV viewing experience:

• Pausing live TV: Press the Play/Pause button to pause the live playback. You can pause for up to two minutes before Fire TV Edition automatically resumes the show.
• Rewinding live TV: Press Rewind to go back ten seconds. Press and hold Rewind to go back up to two minutes at faster speeds.

• Return to the earliest position: Fire TV Edition maintains a two-minute buffer, meaning you can jump back two minutes at any time during playback. To jump back, press Menu and then choose Watch from Earliest.

  To get a larger rewind buffer, connect an external storage drive to your Fire TV Edition Smart TV (see Chapter 8).

• Return to the live show: If you’ve paused or rewound the show or jumped back to the earliest position, you can return to the live feed by pressing Menu and then choosing Jump to Live.