Amazon Fire TV 50″ Omni Series 4K UHD smart TV, hands-free with Alexa

Great display, but needs some upgrades
My wife sent me the listing for this TV when she received it as a special sale item and even though my current old TV was still working fine, I decided that it was a good enough deal that I would upgrade to 4K finally. I liked that it had a lot of potentially beneficial connectivity between other devices, like cameras and other smart home stuff. I already had a TV wall mount from my old TV. The only problem was the mounting holes on the back of this TV were different and I didn’t have the leftovers from the mounting hardware, so I had to wait until the next morning to run to the hardware store and get what I needed. After that, it was up on the wall within minutes. Another problem: the mounting of the bracket on the back on the TV is much lower than my old one, so the TV sits about 8-10″ higher than before. I will need to take down the TV and move the entire wall bracket down so it sits at the right height.Setup is pretty easy, getting through the general stuff, the WiFi connection, updates, and scanning through the TV channels…yes, I still use antenna for a couple local channels I can’t get through streaming. That all went fine. I connected my existing in-wall HDMI cable to the ARC port and set my receiver to the Roku input. I had great picture and audio. I decided that I should also try using the TV with its built-in Fire TV capabilities.That’s where things went off the rails. The ARC was working fine for all of a few minutes, and then after changing a couple unrelated settings and rebooting the TV, I had no more sound over ARC. I messed with settings on the TV and my receiver for 10-15 minutes before turning to the internet for help. I found an answer that said to unplug the TV for a few minutes and then it should work again. Great. Did that and I did indeed have sound over the ARC channel, but it would cut out every 5-7 seconds. I tried messing with all sorts of settings but eventually gave up and just connected an optical cable between the TV and receiver to get sound working properly. I might have to try a newer HDMI cable to see if that makes any difference.With that working, I was able to use the native Fire TV apps. I’ve been using the native Fire TV system now for a couple months and I have to say, it needs work. When the apps work, they work. But every once in a while, and it’s happening almost daily now, I’ll load an app and it won’t respond. I’ll have to reboot the TV and then the apps will start working most of the time. Sometimes even a reboot won’t work and I just have to wait for the app to eventually load. I don’t think its an internet or WiFi issue, since nothing else seems to have any problems. I just think the Fire TV environment is slow. I don’t know if it’s because of the hardware or the software, but the instant I started using it, I could tell how much slower it was to respond to anything compared to the Roku box I have.Needless to say, as a display, this thing works great. The picture is clear and bright, the details are amazing. I haven’t played much with the picture settings, as out-of-box, it was already good. I like that it integrates the OTA TV channels right into the menu so I don’t have to change the input. I also like the on-screen notifications from Alexa for specific things that I have set up. I haven’t played much with the integration of the Ring doorbell and the picture-in-picture display for it. I also plugged a web camera into the USB port on the TV and it recognized it, but I haven’t tried to use Zoom yet with it.I gave it 5 stars, despite the issues with ARC, as that may not necessarily be the fault of the manufacturer, but more an issue with my cable, or the setup between the TV and my receiver…maybe they just don’t work well together. I’ve read that Yamaha’s receivers all tend to be finicky with ARC, so it may just be that. I’m also not dropping any stars, despite the speed issues, as it could potentially be related to my network, or might work fine after an update. Either way, I could use it as just a display with my Roku and it would be a 5-star display at that point. But then I’d lose any capabilities with the integrated Alexa and smart features.