While none of us here at HQ were surprised that Amazon just made this announcement, we were all surprised at the "out of the blue" timing of it. For some time there have been rumors that Amazon would be creating their own TV set-top box product to compete with Apple TV and Google TV and Google's Chromecast. Today those rumors were confirmed when Amazon officially announced Fire TV.
Fire TV is just what you would expect. It is a new device which plugs into your television lets you stream video content from the Internet. The primary focus of Fire TV will be Amazon Prime Video, and it will also support third-party content, like Netflix and Hulu Plus. Amazon even shared that apps like HBO Go and Showtime Anytime will be coming down the pike later.
As usual, the Fire TV will run a customized version of Android, just like the Kindle Fire tablet. Here are a few hardware specs of the device:
- Quad-core processor (supposedly is three times more powerful than Apple TV and other rival devices)
- 2GB of RAM
- Dedicated graphics processor
- Will ship with a tiny, plastic remote control that has only seven buttons and a directional pad
- Voice command search queries
- Support for Android gaming ( Amazon has launched a studio internally to develop in-house games)
Overall, this could be the surprise "sleeper" hit of 2014. What a nice surprise for a lazy Wednesday morning!
Be sure to hit up our dedicated section for the Fire TV over at our sister site, GoogleTVForum.org. You can find that section here: Kindle Fire TV