Every iteration of Fire TV, like the Amazon Fire TV Stick, comes with a remote known as the Alexa Voice Remote, which you can use to choose your movie or TV show using the device.
It's a handy little remote which lets you use voice commands as well as the traditional remote functionality, and it has one extra trick up its sleeve too. You can use your Amazon Fire TV remote to turn turn on your television.
Provided, of course, that your TV has support for CEC. That's short for Consumer Electronics Control, and the short version is that it allows a device connected via HDMI to control aspects of of your television. Various brands have named CEC various awful things — like Sony's Bravia Link or Sharp's Aquos Link or Insignia's INlink — but they all do the same thing. They let components do things to your TV like turn it off and on, or control the volume. Or they let your TV remote control a Blu-Ray player.
And CEC allows Amazon Fire TV to do things like turn your TV off and on, or change inputs, or raise and lower the volume. (With your voice. Because Amazon hates anything not-Alexa. But I digress.)
But if you're like me and really don't want to have to actually talk to your Amazon Fire TV Cube to turn things on, you're in luck. (And this works for the other Fire TV devices, too.) You can use the remote. Yes, the same remote that doesn't have anything that looks like a power button. (Or volume buttons. It's missing volume buttons.)
And that just makes being able to get to all those sweet free movies and shows available on Amazon Fire TV even easier.
How to turn on your TV with the Amazon Fire TV remote
- Grab the remote control firmly, but gently, in your dominant hand.
- Press the Home button. (It's the one that looks like a house.)
- Wait a couple seconds.
If your TV is CEC-compliant, and everything was set up correctly, your TV should turn on and tune to the correct input, and then Fire TV will take things from there. Just keep another remote nearby for the sound levels.
