Amazon Announces ‘Fire TV,’ The Cable-Killing Stream-Come-True


Look out, cable providers! Amazon is about to burn you to the ground with Fire TV, the game-changing box that lets you enjoy all your streaming entertainment on your HDTV.

Hear it all from Amazon’s top dog himself, Jeff Bezos.

“Fire TV is a tiny box that plugs into your HDTV. It’s the easiest way to enjoy Netflix, Prime Instant Video, Hulu Plus, WatchESPN, low-cost video rentals, and more,” Bezos said in an intro letter posted on Amazon’s home page. “With instant access to over 200,000 TV episodes and movies, plus all your favorite subscriptions and streaming services, you can watch what you want, when you want.”

Basically, Amazon’s Fire TV eliminates the need to buy a newer, smarter HDTV. As USA Today tells us, brands like Samsung have already come out with sets that offer built-in apps for those Bezos mentions. But why spend $327.99 on a new 32-inch, as priced on Amazon, when you can get the same options for $99?

“Fire TV may be tiny on the outside, but it has huge hardware specs on the inside,” Bezos continues.

Among those specs?

  • A quad-core processor (the press release boasts that it offers “over 3x the processing power of Apple TV, Chromecast, or Roku 3”)
  • A dedicated GPU
  • 2 GB of memory
  • Dual-band, dual-antenna Wi-Fi

“As rumored, Fire TV will have a gaming component, and Amazon lists Disney, Gameloft, 2K, Ubisoft and Double Fine as some of the publishers that are on board,” says TIME’s Jared Newman.

So, solid tech specs and game support, what more could you ask for?

How about voice search. In fact, according to Bezos, it’s “voice search that actually works.”

With Fire TV you simply speak the title, actor, or genre into the remote and you’re done.

Yeah, OK, sure. Performance, apps, blah blah blah. You have a CEO selling these things. Where’s the celebrity to tell me why I should own it?!

Oh, Gary Busey’s right here, in a commercial that’ll soon be appearing on the TV service we’re all about to divorce?

Sounds like this sweet deal can’t get much sweeter. Unless you mention that anyone who snaps up Amazon’s Fire TV will get a free month-long trial Netflix and Amazon Prime, which includes Prime Instant Video.

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