Michal Ždanský A new player has entered the TV streaming box market, which is currently dominated by Apple with its Apple TV and ROKU. Yesterday, Amazon introduced its latest hardware for streaming content, the Fire TV, with which it wants to conquer our living room. Similar to the Apple TV, it's a little black box that needs to be connected to the internet and TV via HDMI to access the content Amazon has to offer. According to Jeff Bezos, the hardware itself is three times faster than other similar products on the market. It offers 2 GB of RAM, supports 1080p video, and a dual Wi-Fi antenna with MIMO technology ensures fast internet.
However, the alpha and omega of any such device is the content it can offer, and Amazon is certainly not behind. In addition to classic services such as Netflix or Hulu Plus, we can of course also find our own here Amazon Instant Video a Prime Instant Video, where the company will even offer ten exclusive series, similar to Netflix offered by House of Cards. In addition to video services on Fire TV, there will also be music streaming services – Pandora, iHeartRadio a TuneIn. In the Czech Republic, however, most services do not work at all, so the content will definitely not be a big draw for us.
Fire TV also has several other interesting features. The first of them is voice control, which will be used mainly for searching. The remote control includes a microphone and the names of the movies or songs you are looking for, which the software can search across services, can simply be dictated. Amazon guarantees that the dictation recognition should be very accurate. The second interesting feature is X-Ray, which can add information from IMDB to the movies being played or song lyrics to the music.
However, the most interesting thing about the whole device is the support for games, which makes it different from its competition so far. Amazon will also sell a game controller separately for Fire TV for $39. The operating system is based on modified Android and HTML, so developers will be able to port their games for Amazon TV devices. After all Disney, Gameloft, EA, Sega, Ubisoft a Double Fine they have already promised games for Fire TV. Like the Apple TV, the device will sell for $99.
Amazon came up with Fire TV just at the time when a new generation of Apple TV is expected, which, among other things, should also include support for games. Since Amazon itself offers a large amount of multimedia content, a streaming box is a relatively logical step after tablets. However, Apple has one big advantage over Fire TV – AirPlay, and Google also offers a similar protocol in its Chromecast. In any case, Apple has interesting competition in the field of TV accessories, and it will be interesting to see what they come up with against Amazon.
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So no competition at all for the guild, or someone who uses Apple Products ;-).
I personally use AirPlay several times a week (maybe even daily), so I can't do without it.