Amazon announces Fire TV
 

http://sourcefed.com/amazon-announces-fire-tv/

Amazon has dove in head first into video hardware, announcing it’s new set-top device: Amazon Fire TV.

Clearly a competitor for Apple TV and Roku, the $99 device is an internet-connected set-top box which uses voice commands that you speak into its remote control. It will also serve as a gaming console, and consumers have the option to purchase a separate $39 controller that is paired with the box.

Amazon has claimed the device is 3 times more powerful than Apple TV and is based on Android and HTML 5, which means it should be easy for companies to bring their apps over to the platform. It supports Hulu Plus, Netflix, Pandora, Youtube, Crackle, iHeartRadio and Vevo. Sadly, HBO Go and Vudu are not supported.

Fire TV also has a predictive engine called “ASAP,” which pre-loads content it thinks you are going to watch, so it can start without any buffering or load time. This feature learns over time and gets better at suggesting content you like.

In a prior announcement made this weekend, Amazon said it will be turning six shows from its Amazon Originals program into a full series. The shows, which were selected after viewer feedback from the pilot episodes, include ’The After’, ‘Bosch, Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street’, ‘Mozart in the Jungle’, ‘Transparent’ and ’Wishenpoof’. Amazon also renewed ’Alpha House’ — starring John Goodman — for a second season.

As far as gaming is concerned, the console will offer titles such as “Minecraft” and “The Walking Dead”. Many of the titles will be free or cost a little as $1.85 to play.

Now they just need to allow you to control the video quality output.

LMAO... You have to realize you're one of the only people on earth who wants lower quality options.

When I first got my Roku I thought how cool it was to have the media options and all those cool games.

They didn't have any cool games. They had a great idea with the remote and gaming options and it just never went anywhere. A real shame.

Perhaps this will pull in people who don't have a Roku/AppleTV but I see no reason to upgrade from what I've got. Other than the gaming problems mentioned above I love my almost invisible, reliable, and versatile Roku...

You might be surprised. Its one of the things I really appreciate about Netflix. The ability to choose when I watch in HD.

OK.... this thing is really gaining momentum already. It's already been rooted(giggle). It's now got XBMC support, and it can be easily installed without even needing a computer. That's HUGE. It's already being hailed by some XBMC developers as the new best XBMC device. And this is just the very tip of the iceberg.

• Size 4.5" x 4.5" x 0.7" (115 mm x 115 mm x 17.5 mm)
• Weight 9.9 oz (281 grams)
• SOC Platform Qualcomm Snapdragon 8064
• Processor Qualcomm Krait 300, quad-core to 1.7 Ghz
• GPU Qualcomm Adreno 320
• Storage 8 GB internal
• Memory 2 GB LPDDR2 @ 533 MHZ
• Wi-Fi Connectivity Dual-band, dual-antenna Wi-Fi (MIMO) for faster streaming and fewer dropped connections than standard Wi-Fi. 802.11a/b/g/n
• Bluetooth Bluetooth 4.0 with support for the following profiles: HID, HFP 1.6, SPP
• Cloud Storage Free cloud storage for all Amazon content
• Ports 5.5 mm DC Jack, Type A HDMI 1.4b output, w/HDCP, Optical Audio (TOSLINK), 10/100 Ethernet, USB 2.0 Type A
• Audio Support for Dolby Digital Plus, 5.1 surround sound, 2ch Stereo and HDMI audio pass through up to 7.1
• Content Formats Supported Video: H.263, H.264, MPEG4-SP, VC1
• Audio AAC, AC-3, E-AC-3, HE-A, PCM, MP3
• Photo JPG, PNG
• Output Resolution Supported 720p and 1080p up to 60fps

I might make a purchase soon......

Holy crap that was fast. XBMC support makes this a no brainer.

If I got Amazon video and my Google Fiber Box didn't play back MKV files as well as it does I'd be all over it.

Should be interesting to see how (if) Apple counters at WWDC. I'm guessing they will.

Amazon just up and offers the source code to its FireTV online available to the public.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custom...deId=201452680

How. ****ing. Awesome......

XBMC might be its saving grace.

It's not getting the best reviews so far...

Another plus... it uses Amazon's Voice navigation/search features. Which also happens to be perfectly compatible with XBMC too.

"Play latest Game of Thrones!"

:D

Even I rolled my eyes at that one. You sir, are a dork among dorks. :D

Think I'm going to give this a try after some research.

Yeah... we'll see who comes begging for help from this dork when someone else buys one and bricks it..... :evil:

Remember this thing is only a week old. It's going to get much much much better still. There's a $40 game controller available. They've hacked a Ouya controller to work with it, and will likely have a PS3 controller working on it before long. And it has the juice to play some decent games.

Putting the source code out there for any nerd developer to play with? This has the potential to explode, and overtake AppleTV/Roku/Ouya in a landslide. It's already taken huge leaps in it's first week of release.

Success ought to come down to content. Right now everything plays Netflix, Hulu. Apple's got it's library and ecosystem going for it, Amazon has people who will stream by virtue of liking cheap shipping and Google has three (arguably) competing products in Google TV, Google Fiber and Android TV. You've also got the Steam box laying around as a possible competitor.

Developers big and small seem to have adopted iOS and the Apple Ecosystem in a big way. If suddenly EA can push Madden out through an Apple TV or Android TV, cutting out Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony things could get really interesting.

I'll be sitting back and waiting to buy anything in this space until the holidays at the earliest.

Not gonna happen anytime in the near future.

This is how I feel. We have two Roku boxes, and I'm on the verge of getting on of their new streaming sticks for another TV. Its a simple product that works really well. I will need to upgrade our Netflix account though. Right now I can only stream to two devices at a time.

I ordered this for my dad's birthday. With XBMC, I feel this is the best balance between the ease of use of a roku or apple tv and the amazing free content and customization of XBMC.

Within a matter of weeks/months they'll have revamped customized Amazon dashboards that have XBMC available as a dashboard item. You can have different profiles too, to restrict/simplify things for kids and old people.

I don't have any room in my media repertoire for yet another toy. Sounds fun though.

I do hope that there will be some convergence of all these devices as time goes on. I've got 2 smart TV's (one LG and one Vizio), one Roku box, and a Chromecast. They all work great, but it's a bit odd getting used to all of them having slightly different interfaces for Netflix, YouTube, etc.

I don't see Amazon ever embracing XBMC. Would be kind of counterproductive to their bottom line.

We won a Sony Blu Ray player a while back at a charity auction. When the family room DVD player burnt up, we shopped around on Amazon and got a good deal on another one.

They both run XMB so they function, for all intents and purposes, exactly like my PS3. I admit, it's kind of nice having pretty much the same interface in every room.

One question about sony. my inlaws picked up a sony br player, subscribed to netflix and such. Of course had me set it all up for them. Netflix had to be setup through Sony's ecosystem requiring codes and a sony account to throw on top of the netflix account.

To say the least, it was a convoluted mess and a good example why I swear off Sony. Is that every bluray player from them now?

Amazon doesn't have to embrace XBMC. In any way at all. They released the source code. Which means they basically give the user the choice to run the device native and legally which still is very impressive, or open it to the world via open source and let users do what ever the **** they want with the device. It's not counterproductive at all, it actually opens up the device to more demographics.

Guru has a point. Especially when time warner and comcast join. They will start to put out more data limits. Allows them to charge more. People will want lower quality to battle it.

Yeah, you have to have a Sony Essentials account to use any of the advanced features. It really isn't a bid deal though, it doesn't cost anything.

Didn't know they were supporting XBMC. Kinda makes this a no-brainer, even without support (yet) for external storage.

Prolly going to pull the trigger on this instead of a Celeron NUC. With an mSata and RAM, it'd be twice as much.

It'll definitely finish off the Ouya, even at a higher price point (with controller).

Yeah, I would call the Ouya a failure but that's probably giving it too much credit. :D

I liked it well enough, but they were never going to get enough of a customer base to have a robust game lineup. And the wifi was abysmal.

Yeah, it was an uphill battle all the way.

It has all of the drawbacks of a traditional console without the actual gaming power. It also has none of the convenience of a traditional handheld/tablet/smartphone.

It's kind of like the worst of both worlds.

I never liked Ouya. It was destined to fail.

It will be interesting how Steam Box fares in the coming months.

The analysts absolutely hate the idea. I honestly don't see the appeal even if developers get on board (and right now most of them are lukewarm at best).

some people will buy it because it is valve.

I like the idea of Steam OS doing a mirror playback from my Gaming PC, but I wouldnt buy one just for that.

The results from the streaming aren't particularly impressive yet.

The big problem is that Steam OS is built on Linux and most developers just don't want to support another OS, especially one with such a small install base.

It will likely end up being like OS X, where a few LARGE publishers release games and 3rd-party port developers are left cleaning up the gaps. The Windows game market is so many times larger than OS X, it's not even funny.

I thought that Windows would run the game on your gaming rig and steam would mirror it to a less beefy steambox running steam OS?

I wouldnt necessarily poo poo the idea of linux support. In the simplest of terms, if a developer used non proprietary software to make their game, it is rather easy to release it across multiple platforms. Steam makes a lot of money from these indie games on their store. I am sure they could motivate them to release a steam OS version of their title.

That's the idea. It's not working real great right now in the demos people have seen.

I'm not poo-pooing it. Developers are. You should read some of the comments. The industry analysts are even tougher on it than the developers.

The Fire TV runs XBMC like a champ. New leader in the clubhouse for a $99 streaming box.

Thank god. All these chinese imported android boxes for XBMC was ruining it.

Easy install. You dl the Android developer toolkit, synch your computer and Fire, and copy over any sideloaded programs you want.

It's fast, too. I can switch from an authorized app (i.e., Showtime Anytime) and start a video in SBMC in 10-15 seconds.

Anyone else play the game Amazon is giving with the Fire TV, Sev Zero? It's a combo Tower Defense and FPS game that's freaking awesome. I'm a tower defense junky, and haven't really gotten into FPS in a while, but this made it fun as hell.

Can those of you that own this confirm two things for me. 1. will it read large external HDDs 2tb that I store tons of pictures and video files on. 2. Can I install WinSCP on it for quick transferring of small files via wireless.

My gbox crashes regularly now and I'm getting tired of it but these are two features I love and would miss greatly.

No idea on 2, but pretty sure it doesn't support external storage yet.

Well, if 1 doesn't work then 2 doesn't really matter.

You would have to connect those HDDs to the Network for the Fire TV to use them. (for now)

Either NAS or another PC on your network.

Yeah, I picked up on that. Until I can plug my HDD directly into the unit I won't be interested in this. My gbox only crashes when streaming content via xbmc but works just fine on local content. I'll just have to live with until someone makes a box that can do everything. I also like that I can attach a wireless keyboard to the gbox as well as the HDD.

USB HD support will be added in a future firmware release according to Amazon. I bet it will be there in a month or so.

Wow, that takes away the major feature of the box.
Yeah, you wont have to wait long. I am more bummed that the Fire TV only does 1080p. I have an old CRT big screen in my bedroom that has HDMI but only does 1080i. Otherwise I would have bought another one.

It doesn't crash all the time. Just every now and then like every 4-5 days. Just enough to be annoying for me.

That's not bad at all. Hell my original XBOX running XBMC would lose its IP address in that time requiring a restart.

I'm not sure what you mean? 1080p is a higher resolution. The AmazonFire should work just fine with 1080i/720p as well. 1080p means that's the highest possible resolution, but it can also be run at anything less than that. Just not anything higher than 1080p.

Android platform does not scale to 1080i. My old tv does not accept 1080p or 720p. That is what I am bummed about.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custom...x3KHCHMIP7G3YG

Your old TV can't do 720p, but can do 1080i? I guess I never realized that was possible. My bad..

I've never seen it either.

Yeah both Mitsubishi and RCA refused the 720p standard back in the mid 00's. Both do 480p fine. What really sucks is I ended up with the Mits big screen because the salesman at Frys lied to me and said Mits finally started doing 720p. And they did... just not on my model. I got a great deal, but that was annoying.


Anywho, yeah Fire TV only outputs 720p and 1080p.

There are sets out there that only do interlaced video, yes.

Anyone had any success with XBMC 13.0 (Gotham)? It installs, but the clickpad function is disabled (i.e., can't type in repositories, search terms, etc).

System/settings/input devices/ then enable remote control sends keyboard presses

do they have 1channel working on gotham yet?

Haven't had to do that before, on either SPMC or the Ouya build.

This is my question as well.

its broke? it has been working fine on my apple tv running 13.0. it says update available, but if it aint broke...

Yes.

http://www.xbmchub.com/forums/thread...-2-1-1-(Gotham)

Just tried it on my tablet and non go. It won't load the superrepo repositories at all so i still can't get 1channel.

http://repo.gosub.dk/bstrdsmkr/repo/...nnel-2.1.1.zip

Might need to give it a few tries, but eventually goes

dead link. Tried it several times.

Finally got 1channel to install on my tablet and it has all kinds of display issues. Everything worked fine on Frodo. Gotham is a disaster.

Actually, it is unrelated to Gotham other than needing the xml file updated. The main issue is the xbmchub servers.

I would try the source repo instead of Superrepo. Superrepo simply rehosts the actual plugin. So I doubt you would get updates in a timely manner, if at all. Add bstrdsmkr's repo and get 1Channel from there to ensure you're getting the legit plugin and updates. That way it will autoupdate as soon as a new version is released.

It was bstrdsmkrs I ended up getting. For whatever reason, when I try to play video, I get 10 screens of nothing but garble but clear audio. I went back to Frodo since it works without any video issue at all.

That's bizarre. It's working fine for me on every platform.

If I had to guess, since I dont know programming, but really should learn python, the way they set up Gotham is it would be backwards compatible with frodo add ons. All that was required is the xml file for the addon to be updated. With all the server issues they have had, I am sure it is near impossible for you to get your xml updated.

So it works fine on Frodo but not Gotham.

Honestly, I am a bit less than impressed with the enhancements of Gotham. Maybe it is a little faster in the menus, but it was not the big leap like Eden to Frodo was.

Rooted!

Instructions here: http://www.xbmchub.com/forums/thread...Amazon-Fire-TV

with rooted access, i bet you can finally get usb storage going.

I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that is a firmware issue not a rooted issue.

OK.... USB storage is now working...

Here's how: http://www.xbmchub.com/forums/thread...-Fire-TV-(ROOT)

I was going to say. with root access you could have android mount an "sd card" that is actually your usb.

Either way, the Fire TV gets better and better. Anything to kill the China made boxes that are muddying up the XBMC community.

I don't care enough to start a thread about it, but Amazon's finally putting out their long-rumored phone:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/...he-fire-phone/

AT&T

why does the shittiest network get debut all the cool phones?