Author: Press Room
I like using the Amazon Fire TV Stick because it has a fast and responsive UI, turning my old dumb TV into a modern smart TV. However, the FireTV Stick does not have the Play Store. It features Amazon’s own version of the App Store, boasting a massive app library, but it still lacks many apps due to restrictions, its custom UI, or a region lock that I cannot live without. Suppose you are like me and trying to get one of those region-locked or missing apps on the Amazon Fire TV Stick, worry not. You can still get the…
Every home has a hub. Some families use a whiteboard for write-and-wipe reminders. Others stick calendar commitments to the fridge. But only the best smart speaker devices can recognise faces and nudge you not to neglect your chores. Creepy, but more effective than littering the house with scrap paper prompts. More than countertop tablets, the top smart displays serve as nerve centres for everyone in your abode. From controlling connected tech and setting personalised alerts, to looking up recipes, streaming entertainment and dropping in on unsuspecting relatives, these panels can assist with almost every domestic demand. Smart displays come in…
Whether you’re about to climb a mountain or dive to the depths of the ocean, you’ll want the best action camera in your hand – or attached to some part of your body. These small, lightweight and highly survivable cameras are built specifically to go where even the camera phones can’t. Mountable on helmets, surfboards, bikes, cars and more, action cameras can capture smooth, stable and cinematic footage in all kinds of situations. And their portability and wide-angle lenses make them ideal for on-the-hoof vlogging, too. GoPro has long been the go-to brand in this category, becoming essentially synonymous with…
The iPad changed personal tech when it launched in 2010. It proved a tablet could be more than a gimmick, slipping neatly between phones and laptops with a design that put touch first. Steve Jobs famously called it “magical,” and while plenty of people doubted it at the time, it quickly turned into a worldwide hit. Since then, Apple has steadily evolved the iPad. Faster chips, sharper screens and clever accessories like the Apple Pencil and Magic Keyboard have turned it into far more than a media slate. With each update, the iPad has edged closer to being a genuine…
Yes, there are fitness trackers for kids. While those bundles of energy might not always need much of a nudge to ditch the big screen and go play out in the garden, there are wearables for your children that, just like the best fitness trackers for grown-ups, want to help them be active and think a little bit about their health too. Rather than being fully fledged smartwatches like those found in the best smartwatches for kids guide, these fitness trackers typically stick to the basics and think less about monitoring heart rate or blood oxygen levels and more about…
I’m a sucker for fan fiction, even the ones that don’t really add up or make a lot of sense to established canon. Some of my favorites are the ones where two universes collide for the biggest crossover that fan-fueled media can possibly provide. I’ve even written some of my own, though they’ll never see the light of day, at least under my own name. Anyway, this has led to a lot of time lost in thought, wondering what movies could actually take place in the same universe, living under the same canon. I know I am not the only…
If you’ve ever fired up Netflix or HBO Max and seen the little “Dolby Atmos” badge, you could be forgiven for thinking that your TV and soundbar will automatically reproduce sound in glorious spatial audio. I thought the same, when in fact, my Atmos-ready soundbar wasn’t delivering Dolby Atmos at all. The problem didn’t lie with my TV, my soundbar, or the apps I was streaming. The issue was that I wasn’t using the correct HDMI cable. It wasn’t about quality, as I understand the pitfalls of using substandard connectors, but about bandwidth. In short, Atmos needs more bandwidth than…
One of the first things I learned in film school was that using narration in your screenplay was usually a sign of weak or lazy writing. I’ll just say that there are plenty of films and shows that prove that statement fairly correct. It can absolutely be a crutch or an easy way to betray the “show, don’t tell” rule of visual storytelling. Yet, so many movies and shows continue to implement it, and it’s obviously not a dealbreaker for the studios that finance them. And I think there’s a very simple, obvious answer to why that is: Sometimes, narration…
As an owner of the latest-generation Fire TV Stick, I find Amazon’s Appstore the easiest way to install apps, especially after installing a VPN. However, after a while, it began to show its limitations in terms of specialized add-ons and accessing content that Amazon doesn’t officially support. I needed a customizable solution that unlocks my streaming stick’s full potential. That’s when I remembered Kodi, the open-source media center that I installed on my second-generation Fire TV Stick back in 2019. Sideloading (manually installing) this application onto my Fire TV Stick 4K was a real game-changer, as it transformed my ordinary…
I thought smart TVs would make my life easier. What I got instead was endless frustration. My four Roku TCL Smart TVs crawled through menus, took forever to load apps, and bombarded me with ads at every turn. I was thinking about replacing them when I tried something different: blocking ads through my router. This simple change made my TVs run faster than they had since the day I bought them. The change happened immediately. Navigating menus went from painfully slow to lightning quick. Apps that used to take ages to start up now open in seconds. What had been…