Amazon Fire TV set-top box ships today for $99

Shawn Knight

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amazon fire amazon set-top box prime instant video streaming box firetv

Amazon on Wednesday finally put rumors to rest with the unveiling of its first play for the living room. Fire TV is the set-top box (not a dongle) we’ve been hearing about for months that’s actually more like a high-end smartphone than anything else already on the market – that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

During a media event in New York, Amazon’s Peter Larsen said there are three pain points associated with the current crop of streaming devices: search, performance and a closed ecosystem. Amazon aims to address all of them with the Fire TV.

amazon fire amazon set-top box prime instant video streaming box firetv

Inside the petite set-top box is a quad-core processor alongside 2GB of RAM which according to Larsen, should eliminate any hint of lag. He said it is three times faster than the latest solutions from Apple and Roku. Connectivity includes a standard HDMI port, optical audio, a USB port and Ethernet around back.

On the ecosystem front, Amazon is teaming up with a number of partners including Hulu, MLB.tv, the NBA, Netflix, YouTube and Vimeo. It doesn’t sound like all of those apps will be available at launch but instead, over time. These are of course in addition to Amazon’s own streaming service, Instant Video.

amazon fire amazon set-top box prime instant video streaming box firetv

The box runs Android and HTML which should make it easy for developers to port existing apps. An included remote is used for navigation and there’s even a built-in microphone for voice commands.

As was seen in leaks leading up to the event, Amazon also announced the Fire game controller. It’s priced at $39.99 with 1,000 Amazon Coins to buy games with. We’re told that the average game will cost $1.85 although there are more than 1,000 free-to-play titles as well. There are several hit titles lined up for the platform but the biggest of them all is no doubt Minecraft: Pocket Edition.

amazon fire amazon set-top box prime instant video streaming box firetv

Amazon Fire TV retails for $99 and ships starting today.

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Seems interesting, but am I the only one burned out by these things? Every time one comes out there's always some major limitation. For example this one might be great for gaming, but can't run, or doesn't support, the 1 game you want to play. Or you want to stream your own videos from your media server, but it doesn't run the main format you use, but does everything else you want. HTPCs are nice, but even those have too high a TDP for me (<10w load is the goal.)
 
The gaming aspect is interesting, but otherwise, it's like one of a thousand other streaming boxes (including embedded in blu-ray players and Smart TV's) out there.
 
It supports plex, which does transcoding from a media server. plex choked on 1080p content on my nsz-gs7 (dual core marvell), fwiw.
 
I am between this, the ASUS Chromebox, and possibly the new Apple TV whenever it is released. We will see.
 
Just get a raspberry pi with openelec and you will have no issues with 99.9% of any streaming service, including streaming all your nice mkvs from your server.
 
If this will support streaming from a local media server, then I "might" be interested.
I agree - give me a media player that I can stream my NAS content to and support my file types (mkv, h.264, .mp4, mpeg2-4....). If we can load XBMC on this box with good results amazon will sell a TON of these.
 
So far this is a great device...I've had it now for 2 days!! The gaming is great but still waiting on game controller to get here it was on backorder but they just emailed me and told me it would be here tuesday the 8th. As a streaming device I would give it 5 stars...as a gaming device as far as apps and games run 5 but don't expect to play tons of games unless you plan on deleting them and reinstalling etc.. the 5 gigs of space leaves a lot to be desired unfortunately....I have already filled up 3gigs that leaves 2 gigs left...and the usb port does not work with anything as of yet...I could only hope they would allow for external hard drive!! If you have amazon prime or have bought lots of movies and videos on amazon instant video this is for you!!! It is fast and I have not had a streaming issue yet.
 
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