How to Use Fire Stick on Laptop? Detail Guide

The Amazon Fire TV Stick is a convenient streaming technology that features a lot and an incredibly lightweight shape factor. You can place all the stuff, power, and all in the pant pocket and head out at the door. Due to the popularity of the Fire TV Stick and the ability to operate on just about any TV with an HDMI connection, it often asks: will an Amazon Fire TV Stick be used to stream video to the laptop?

Those who travel usually have the machine that goes with them, and it seems like they are no brainer to take their Fire TV Stick along the way, right? You can plug the Fire TV Stick into the laptop anywhere. WiFi is available, and enjoy all your favorite programs. Sadly, there are some severe hurdles in anyone way who wants to try.

In general, due to HDMI limitations, most non-TV or monitoring devices only have HDMI output ports. HDMI-in needs to be its separate port for the import of video into the system. Most gadgets are designed for either outputting or accepting video from external sources, with a few exceptions.

So, in general, you can’t use an Amazon Fire Stick on a laptop – not without any extra work, at least. Keep tuned to learn how.

How do I connect my Firestick to my laptop with HDMI?

You are right because the laptop’s HDMI port is for performance and cannot be used with the Amazon Fire Stick. Is there something you can’t get on the laptop on the Amazon Fire Stick? You can use your web browser to navigate Amazon Prime and other websites. The Fire Stick shouldn’t be needed on your laptop.

Can you use a Firestick on a desktop computer?

The Fire TV Stick is made for TV sets – but can it fit with a computer monitor? The response is yes, but it may require a bit of finagling and some extra hardware. I’ll show you in this article how to link your Fire TV stick to just about any device that you have.

A Deeper Explanation

The Fire Stick uses an HDMI device to connect to your TV and to view your content. Most newer laptops also have HDMI for external displays, so both should be connected and work properly? Wrong. Wrong. The Amazon Fire Stick is an HDMI output broadcasting system. The HDMI port on the laptop is also a broadcast output to transmit signals elsewhere to external screens and reflect the laptop screen.

Since they are both transmitted ports, the signal is sent and not programmed to receive. Even if your laptop’s HDMI port had been modified magically to an input port, it would still not work – it connects to the graphics card with the laptop’s HDMI port, not to the built-in display. No hardware route is required to carry your HDMI signal to the laptop screen. You can’t use your Amazon Fire Stick on a standard laptop.

However, you can look at two choices. Neither of these is too highly recommended — read on to find out why.

Option 1: Elgato HD60S + ViewHD HDMI Splitter

If you’ve never heard about Elgato. Elgato has made its name one of the leading capturing cards on PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles for recording gameplay, and today you can still pick up capture cards on your laptop.

The Elgato HD60 S features software to position the input from the USB-C cable on a laptop screen. Nevertheless, the control of video streams requires something like a monster machine. You will need either a Sierra MacBook or a 64-bit Windows 10 PC. An i5-4xxx quad-core or better processor and a pretty decent graphics card are required (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 600 or better). And you’re going to need a USB 3.0 port.

So you’re set once you’ve got that. Honey, no.

The challenge is that the Fire TV Stick sends an HDMI signal using HDCP. I won’t go into the weeds on what HDCP is, but it’s essentially an encryption protocol used to protect digital content from unauthorized copying. The Elgato HD 60 S sadly does not work with HDCP.

However, it is possible to eliminate this HDCP encryption by routing the signal through an HDMI View splitter. It is a simple small device used to split HDMI signals, but for our purposes, all that we care about is to “break” the HDCP and send only the necessary HDMI signal. When your Fire TV Stick output passes the splitter, it should go through the Elgato, the USB 3.0 port on your laptop, the streaming/recording app of Elgato, and finally, the laptop screen for long.

This approach has some drawbacks: you will have to fight with around 500 HDMI cables and power cables. Another one, and this one is very critical, hasn’t been checked yet by anyone. We focus our work on what OUGHT works, not what has proved to work. So, if you try this, you should be mindful that (a) we do not promise to work, think it should work, and (b) you should leave us a message below to tell us that either this was a genius or an utter failure.

Option 2: Finding a Laptop with an HDMI-in port

Whether it is valid or not, laptops have provided HDMI-in ports in addition to HDMI-out ports to produce content on TVs and external monitors in the past. However, they are just a few and far away, and Alienware’s m17x R4 is one of the only models we can find with an HDMI socket. It should be remembered before you start saving to buy it that it was published in 2012—eight years ago—and so even though you can find one on eBay, you don’t want to use it.

The laptop was launched several months before the release of Windows 8. While it was, for the time being, a high-end gaming laptop, its processor and GPU combination was nothing that could be said about 2020. You better don’t waste time.

Casting from a laptop to an Amazon Fire Stick

You can do things around your Amazon Fire Stick if you want to watch movies saved on your laptop on a Monitor. There are two ways to do that: mirror Windows 10, and the other to use Plex.

• The first way to set up the Windows screen mirroring system is to:
• Ensure you have the same WiFi network on your laptop and Amazon Fire Stick.
• Keep the Home button on your remote Amazon to control Settings.
• Choose Mirroring.
• On the lower right side of your Windows 10 Taskbar, click the notification bubble.
• Pick the Link button at the bottom of the slider from the tiles.
• As Windows detects your Amazon Fire Stick.

Your laptop can now be shown on TV with which your Amazon Fire Stick is connected. Change the laptop screen resolution until it looks lovely—Right-click on the empty part of your laptop and select Settings for Display.

Can I Use My Fire TV Stick To Stream Content On My Computer Instead Of My TV?

Yes, instead of using your TV, you can use your Fire TV stick to stream content to your screen. If you want to use a computer display, it will be straightforward to have proper connections and screen resolution. However, should you be mindful that it is not entirely mandatory to use an existing desktop or laptop computer?

If you have internet access, you can ultimately link your web browser to all the same streaming services. It wouldn’t value your time or the cost of using a Fire Stick to stream your computer content.

Use Your Browser Instead Of A Fire Stick To Watch TV On Your Computer

You can view all your online subscriptions directly on your web browser by using your Laptop or Mac. Services including Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Sling, Xfinity, and Fios are included. The method is much more comfortable, more productive, and smooth.

Open and log in to each online subscription in different tabs. Open your browser. You can add all of them to your toolbar bookmarks, and any time you feel like watching something, you can easily access any subscription.

If you are playing a movie or TV program, the viewing area can be expanded to full size to enjoy the same quality still. While this isn’t your Fire TV, it’s going to do the same.

Connecting An Amazon Fire TV Stick To Your Computer Monitor

Some people will choose to use their Firestick with their computer monitor to connect to a standard TV set. In this case, if your model has an HDMI input, you can easily attach the Fire Stick to your computer monitor.

The majority of modern computer monitors have an HDMI connection. If you do, make sure your display is at least 720p* in screen size.

If your computer can switch between several inputs, you can retain both your fire drive and your computer tower linked to your monitor so you can switch between the two**. You must connect your device to another input while holding your Firestick connected through the HDMI port.

One thing to keep in mind is that your monitor requires HDCP support. HDCP-enabled monitors allow you to decrypt and display content without problems. Many modern monitors have this, but testing before purchasing a computer monitor will be a good idea.

Using Plex to cast from a laptop to an Amazon Fire Stick

Plex takes a little planning, but you can watch from your laptop whatever you want once you have done that. You’ll use Plex Media Server, another TechJunkie favorite. When set up, it is free and straightforward to use.

A laptop is not the best computer for running a media server, but it can work if it is your only choice. Plex can play the content from your laptop and transfer it to your Amazon Fire Stick wirelessly. Here’s how to do it, if that’s of interest.

• On your laptop, download and install Plex.
• Follow the Plex installation wizard, connect media, and set up the server.
• On your Amazon Fire Stick, download and install the Plex app.
• Leave Plex on your laptop and open the Firestick program.

As long as Plex is running on your laptop and both devices are on the network, Plex should be detected automatically on the fire stick, and all media you added to your setup should be identified. You can now stream as much as you like!

How do I connect my fire stick to my TV without HDMI?

Connecting your Amazon fire stick to an older TV with a composite adapter from HDMI:

• Plugin the USB power cable of your Fire Stick.
• Plugin the strength of the adapter.
• Adjust the output of the adapter to fit the signal of the field.
• Attach the Amazon Fire TV stick to the HDMI port of the adapter.

How do I connect my Amazon fire stick to my computer using USB?

Use the Network Connect option instead if your Fire TV system does not provide a USB cable port.

• Install the USB driver as defined in the Set Up Android Debug Bridge if you’re on Windows.
• Turn on USB debugging.
• Link your Fire TV to your computer’s USB port.