Gadgetory

the fight for your living room is heating up Apple Google Microsoft Sony and small players like Roku all want to take over your television and sell you movies and TV shows the new Amazon fire TV is a set-top box that plugs into your TV and connects to your home's Wi-Fi or Ethernet network it's not much different in appearance from an Apple TV or Roku 3 though it's a little thinner and a little larger than either of those but the hardware design matters little this thing is designed to sit on your home entertainment center and get it out of the way you control the fire TV with its included bluetooth remote it's pretty similar to both Apple and Roku's remotes and offers basic controls for navigating the interface and playing your media it also has a button for Amazon's voice search function which I'll get to in a minute Amazon's goal with the fire TV is to address three main frustrations it's seen from customers of the other media streamer's speed search and accessibility it's packed the fire TV with a quad-core processor and lots of RAM so it reacts quickly when you navigate menus and load content it has a new voice search function that works effortlessly and completely obviates a need to manually enter your searches with the remote an Amazon promises to offer you access to as many media services as it can in addition to its own Instant Video Service there are apps for Hulu Plus Netflix watch ESPN crackle and many others available at launch a big exception here is HBO Go which isn't available but Amazon tells us that it's working with HBO to bring that to the fire TV soon if you've ever used the Kindle Fire tablet the interface of the fire TV will be very familiar it's a basic grid of TV shows apps and movies that you can watch it's simple and straightforward enough but not much different from the interfaces on other media streaming boxes Amazon pretty loads your content on the fire TV before shipping it to you so once you've connected it to your network all of your Instant Video purchases Amazon Cloud Drive photos and starting next month cloud player music are instantly available the fire TV tries to learn your viewing habits to preload content before you decide to watch it so you see fewer spinning circles and more movies the extra hardware horsepower Amazon has packed into the box shows it's more responsive and loads content quicker than a Roku or Apple TV and as with Amazon's tablets if you're fully invested in Amazon's ecosystem you're going to get the most out of the fire TV the Hulu and Netflix apps are very similar to what you get on a Roku or Apple TV but they are siloed from the rest of the features Amazon is pushing with the fire TV you can't use the excellent voice search within Hulu or and you still have to tediously key in your logins using the remote things you watch on hulu or netflix won't show up in your recent feed and you do a lot of bouncing between services if you're watching video from different sources Amazon does have some integration with Hulu when you use a universal search function so you can get right to a show from the main interface but the biggest differentiator for the fire TV is its games offering you can get an optional controller for 39.99 or use the included remote to play a variety of games ranging from arcade racer asphalt 8 to an Amazon developed halo clone to Disney sponsored runners for the most part the games look nice and run well low times can be a little long but I didn't see any dropped frames or stuttering while playing the game the controller is a pretty generic clone of an Xbox controller with dual control sticks rear triggers and a few mushy buttons but for the most part it gets the job done most of the games appear to be ports from existing Android smartphone or tablet titles but with Amazon developing its own with its own studio of games there's a good chance we'll see many more titles specifically made for the fire TV in the future it's not something that can compete with the Xbox one or Playstation 4 but for the casual gamer it's a nice little addition to what is already a capable media streaming box and it's probably going to eat the Ouya and other Android power gaming systems for lunch there are some interesting things that are missing from the fire TV I can't use it to actually shop Amazon for products and the vaunted made a support service from the Kindle Fire tablets is nowhere to be found there's a good chance that both of these features will be added at some point in the future but for now the fire TV is very much a media streaming box and it's a first-edition one at that the fire TV is probably the best media streamer you can get right now at 99 bucks it's the same price as the Apple TV and only a little more than a Roku 3 but it's faster offers more and has games to boot but if you're looking for it to be a replacement for your cable TV service it's really no different from the current options already on the market Amazon isn't up ending the television industry with this one it's just giving you more ways to give it money