A Fire TV Stick and its browser
A Fire TV Stick turns any television with an HDMI socket into one that can open a web page, which makes it the cheapest way to fix a venue whose screen has no browser. It runs the page itself, so nothing has to stay awake in the room.
What you need
- A Fire TV Stick and a spare HDMI socket on the screen
- The stick connected to the internet
- The Silk browser, which is free from the Fire TV app store
- A power source for the stick — use the mains adapter, not the television's USB port
Setting it up
Install the Silk browser
Search for Silk in the Fire TV app store and install it. Do this before the day — not in a dark room ten minutes before guests arrive.
Open the wall link
Silk's on-screen keyboard is slow. Amazon's phone app has a remote with a keyboard that makes typing the link far less painful, and it is worth installing for that alone.
Bookmark it
Save the link as a bookmark or set it as the home page, so if the stick restarts during the evening you are two clicks from the wall rather than typing it again.
Turn off the screensaver
Fire TV shows a photo screensaver after a few minutes of no input. Switch it off in the display settings, or it will cover the wall all evening.
If something is wrong
The screensaver keeps covering the wall
Set the screensaver start time to Never in the Fire TV display settings. The browser being open does not count as activity, so the default will interrupt you.
The stick keeps restarting or running slowly
Usually power. A stick fed from the television's USB socket often gets too little; use the mains adapter it came with.