Yesterday, Amazon announced a new addition to their family, the Amazon Fire TV.
What is Amazon Fire TV, you may ask?
It’s like a ROKU, only better.
The best way I can describe it, is that it takes all the awesomeness of ROKU (the number of programs) and the awesomeness that is AppleTV (a bigger processor) and the coolness of gaming systems (it reacts to speech and has the ability to play games). So in essence, it is everything combined and right now it is $99.00.
Massive selection—Over 200,000 TV episodes and movies, millions of songs, and over a hundred games
Perfect with Prime—Unlimited access to thousands of popular movies and TV shows including exclusive titles like Downton Abbey and Under the Dome. Get a free 30-day trial
Voice search that actually works—Simply say the name of what you want to watch and start enjoying in seconds. Show me
Tiny box, huge specs—Fast quad-core processor, 2 GB of memory, dedicated GPU, plus 1080p HD video and Dolby Digital Plus surround sound
Easy to set up and use—Pre-registered to your Amazon account so you can enjoy favorite titles and personalized recommendations
Instant streaming—Exclusive new feature ASAP predicts what movies and TV episodes you’ll want to watch and buffers them for playback before you hit play
Perfect for parents—Amazon FreeTime lets you easily limit screen time and create personalized profiles just for kids (coming soon)
Great for gaming, too—Play blockbuster titles like Minecraft-Pocket Edition, The Walking Dead, and Monsters University, plus free games and Amazon exclusives. Paid games start from just 99 cents
So is this a game changer? Not necessarily. The addition of more memory and a core processor (aka…it will run faster), as well as the ability to play games is awesome. But there is now reason to get ride of your ROKU or GoogleChromecast. However, if I had a ROKU on it’s last leg, I would seriously consider purchasing Amazon Fire TV for the same money.
Pricing was current when the post was published, however Amazon prices change often, so please check before you buy.