Amazon adds annoying streaming service buttons to your Fire TV remote

Amazon is launching a third generation of its Alexa Voice Remote, and includes some new unwanted buttons that will take you to the Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney Plus and Hulu apps. If you are one of those people who regularly subscribe and use all of these streaming services, this remote control can be a good update. But for everyone else, the buttons will only add friction and annoyance to the Fire TV control experience.

We here in The Verge we’ve talked about why we don’t like these buttons before. They turn your remote control into a permanent advertising screen for services you can’t even use and take up space that could be used for buttons that take you to services you Does to use. If you, say, don’t subscribe to Disney Plus or Hulu, then the buttons are, at best, useless for you and, at worst, waiting to be accidentally pressed, letting you give up on an app that is begging you to sign up. .

The obvious alternative is to make the buttons mappable to the services you use and not to put the permanent mark on them. If the remote control came with four buttons that you could use to open your favorite streaming services, the story would be quite different. Unfortunately, it is not. But hey, now the voice control button is an Alexa button for even more branding! (I admit that this is not so bad, since it was already called Alexa Voice remote control.)

Image: Amazon

I don’t want it to look like some annoying buttons (which may actually be useful to some people) are the end of the world or that this new remote has no redeeming qualities. In fact, there is one more button that takes you to a “guide” that shows a cable-like timeline of all the content available on the live providers you own, such as Sling, Hulu or YouTube TV.

Unlike branded ones, it is small and lacks bright colors, so it’s easy to ignore if you don’t need it (and you won’t be so prone to accidental pressures). I just wanted remote manufacturers to let us choose the features we want on our remotes, especially since the landscape of the streaming service is constantly changing and people started subscribing to a service for a few months and then switching to another one.