Pic from amazon.com

I’ve been late to a lot of the tech parties – I thought eBay was ridiculous (wrong!); I still don’t tweet … but whatever.

I have not resisted streaming services for video – I just didn’t need same. I purchased DVDs (physical media – how Old School!) or rented same.

I didn’t need Netflix etc.

But – last month – as part of a larger Amazon.com “Stuff on Sale buy stuff you don’t even need” campaign (the so-called Prime Day), the basic Fire Stick was on sale.

For $20.

I have Amazon Prime – which has a lot of free content (TV & movie); let’s give it a whirl.

It’s been remarkable. Streaming is, as late to the party dude will attest, the future.

The upsides to streaming are sorta obvious – pick stuff, play/pause and so on. (Note: Romy “discovered” a TV series in the Fire Stick that she is watching. So I have to add to “sorta obvious” streaming pluses are … well, discovery.)

Streaming downsides are more complicated:

• You get what they have. What if you missed what rolled off yesterday? Didn’t see the end of the movie; the last episode of TV show X?
• Sure, the selection is large, so if you wanted X, there is always Y and Z. What’s the diff? Is this good or bad?
• But what if you really wanted to watch Casablanca? I have the physical disc; streaming service might not have same.
• Yes, what I really need is another black remote…

Streaming – like all tech – is give and take.

But streaming is better than I imagined….

And Amazon did a brilliant ($$-focused) job of providing a way to easily stream (Hardware: FireStick; Content: Prime Video) and make dolts like me sing its praises.

To paraphrase the Aerosmith song Dream On: Stream on / Stream on…

Update 9/9/2018 – Bought a new bedroom TV; it has Amazon Prime built in. Still awesome, but the TV doesn’t have the Fire’s voice remote capabilities. Not the end of the world, but the voice remote is better (to me) than having to (via screen keyboard) keying in same. I’m still a little skeptical about voice activated systems (touted for, for example, MS Word/email constructs – nah, not soon), but works for home remotes/Alexa etc. Soon, it’ll be hard to buy an electronic device without voice control – like how you can’t buy a car without an insane (AM/1233333 FM channels/phone/cd/device connectivity etc) radio (is that still a “radio” or a “communications port”?)

I could be wrong.

But I’m not.