[opendtv] Amazon Unveils Amazon Fire TV - TheStreet

From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2014 14:23:35 -0400

http://www.thestreet.com/story/12606496/1/amazon-unveils-amazon-firetv.html?puc=TSMKTWATCH&cm_ven=TSMKTWATCH

Amazon Unveils FireTV

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Following weeks of speculation, Amazon has announced
Amazon Fire TV, its new streaming device, that will compete against the likes
of Apple, Google and Roku in an increasingly crowded market.

The new device, which looks similar to Apple's set-top box but is more squared
off and "thinner than a dime," according to Amazon vice president Peter Larsen,
was announced at a press conference in Manhattan on Wednesday, to a group of
roughly 150 media and industry followers. Amazon is selling the device for $99
and plans to begin shipping Fire TV today.

Amazon Fire TV will feature a flurry of channels including Hulu Plus, Netflix,
SHowtime, HBO GO, Bloomberg TV, WatchESPN and Vimeo, to name a few, and of
course give users access to Amazon Prime's Instant Video. It's the "best place
to watch the most popular movies and TV shows in the comfort of your own home,"
Larsen said.

"This is not a closed ecosystem," Larsen noted at the conference.

Fire TV also brings photos, music, and games to the living room, the company
said in a press release. "Tiny box, huge specs, tons of content, incredible
price--people are going to love Fire TV," said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, in a
statement. "Voice search that actually works means no more typing on an
alphabet grid. Our exclusive new ASAP feature predicts the shows you'll want to
watch and gets them ready to stream instantly. And our open approach gives you
not just Amazon Instant Video and Prime Instant Video, but also Netflix, Hulu
Plus, and more. On Fire TV you can watch Alpha House and House of Cards."

Edit: One of the original tweets said no YouTube, but it indeed offers YouTube.
It's not a native YouTube app.

The device puts Amazon further in competition with Apple and Google, both of
which already offer streaming devices -- the Apple TV, and Chromecast,
respectively. Apple TV costs $99 and comes in set-top box form, while the
Chromecast runs $35 and comes in a dongle. Amazon's device will also compete
with Roku, which makes its own streaming devices. Roku recently announced its
own streaming dongle, selling at retail for $49.99.

Amazon's Larsen stressed the fact that Fire TV is faster and more powerful than
what's out there. It features a quad-core processor, a dedicated GPU, and can
handle 57 billion floating point operations per second, to go along with 2GB of
RAM. It also features dual band, dual Wi-Fi with Mimo to help stop buffering, a
problem other set-top boxes have had issues with. Larsen noted the Fire TV has
three times the performance of Apple TV, Chromecast and Roku 3.

Larsen noted that consumers' most frequent complaints about streaming devices
include difficulty in searching for shows, performance and buffering, and
closed ecosystems.

In addition to the aforementioned features, Amazon's Fire TV has Dolby digital
plus surround sound, and features voice search for navigating, built right in
to the remote, as opposed to typing in the names of the shows or actors,
similar to what is offered in competitor's devices.

-- Written by Chris Ciaccia and Laurie Kulikowski in New York

[opendtv] Amazon Unveils Amazon Fire TV - TheStreet

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