After the phenomenal success of the hardware devices like Kindle eReaders and Fire HD/HDX tablets, has ventured into developing another popular electronic product a media streaming device called the Fire TV. Along with all the other products from Amazon, you can now buy the Fire TV in India too.
What is Fire TV?
The Fire TV is a media streaming set-top box that transforms your HDTV into a world of unlimited online entertainment! With access to a wide selection of TV shows, movies, videos, music, games, photos and exclusive features like voice search, ASAP and FreeTime, the Fire TV is the easiest and quickest way to enjoy your favourite media streaming services. As a bonus, the Fire TV combines all your favourite subscriptions with Amazon s massive digital library and gives you the freedom to rent videos and movies at the lowest possible cost or simply enjoy your favourite sports, news, music, games and more.
Classic design
The Fire TV is a simple flat black box of 4.5 inches with nothing but the logo embossed on it. The sleek and thin dimensions, along with a matte finished plastic for the outer cg, lend the box a sophisticated vibe. The lean height of the box provides only for the space required by the HDMI ports and nothing else.
Tiny box, huge specs
For its size, the Fire TV is power packed with some of the best features. A fast and fluid Snapdragon quad-core processor with a dedicated Adreno 320 graphics engine and 2 GB storage memory, Fire TV is the fastest responsive streaming device out there. It streams your media content up to 1080p HD with Dolby Digital Plus 7.1 and enables you to enjoy rich, cinematic surround sound via HDMI or optical out. With its unbeatable speed and efficiency, and an open platform based on HTML and Android system, the Fire TV has a lot of advantages over its competitors. The unrestricted ecosystem makes it easy to port apps from the web and the Play Store and offer users a large variety of streaming content.
Quick setup
Setting up the Fire TV doesn t take more than a few minutes. You need to connect the device to your HDTV via a cable, connect the device to the internet via Wi-Fi and you re all set to stream.
Easy to use interface
The user interface for the Fire TV is simple and easy to navigate. It is image heavy, making content more accessible to the user; you can pick a movie poster and hit play for instant playback. No need to waste time reading through the text of options and complicated steps to get to what you really want. Get personalised recommendations, add new discoveries to your watch-list with a single click and save all you purchased content in your video library; make browsing through content an experience like never before!
Fire TV remote
The Fire TV remote connects with the set-top box via Bluetooth giving you a stronger connection. This also means that you don t really need to point the remote at your set-top box for it to function. The simple eight-buttons remote gives you all controls like search, watch, play/pause, home, back, navigate, voice commands and even allows you to play games.
Voice search
The Fire TV, with its fully functional voice search feature, saves you the trouble and hassle of typing your search commands with a remote. The Fire TV remote comes with a built-in microphone and enhanced voice input. You simply need to hold the voice button and speak clearly the name of a movie, TV show, actor, director, genre or any keyword and your Fire TV will give you a list of all the available options. You ve got to try it to believe it!
ASAP feature
The Fire TV comes equipped with an exclusive ASAP feature to view content. This technology enables your Fire TV to stream media instantaneously, without any lag of buffering. The immediate playback feature is not offered by any other streaming device in the market and the credit lies with the Fire TV s faster processor and larger storage memory.
FreeTime
The FreeTime feature enables parents to monitor and restrict the types of content kids can access via the Fire TV. This parental control mode lets parents pipe content into a special mode for kids, where they can do things like set time limits, have control over exactly what shows kids can watch, what apps they can access and avoid kids accidentally stumbling upon something unsuitable for their age. By changing the background and fonts to something more child friendly, this secure and safe-viewing mode appeals to kids too!
The FreeTime Unlimited content subscription is the ultimate treat for children and parents. For a minimal monthly fee, you can get unlimited access to content from Nickelodeon, Sesame Street and other child-oriented channels.
Mirror your tablet and phone
Is it one of those days when you d rather watch movies and read your ebooks on your HDTV than on the little tablet in your hand? No problem. One simple command and you can mirror your tablet screen (as it is) on to your TV and control all the functions from your tablet. This means you can play all your videos and movies saved on your phone or tablet on your HDTV with a few simple clicks.
The advanced Second Screen feature also lets you fling media on to the big screen, leaving your tablet free for other tasks. You can also use the X-ray feature to get more trivia about the content you re watching or even display the lyrics of a song on the screen and turn your HDTV into a karaoke system.
Music, photos, videos and more
Fire TV makes sure you get your daily dose of music via services like Pandora, iHeartRadio, TuneIn and VEVO. In addition to the millions of songs available via internet radio, you can also access your entire mp3 library and enjoy previously purchased songs. If you exit to the home screen to view photos or play games, the music can be adjusted to keep playing in the background.
You can also sync you tablet or Smartphone with the Cloud Drive, save all your photos and videos on cloud and access them from your Fire TV. You can view photos as slide shows or set a picture as your screen saver; reliving memories on the big screen with family and friends is now simple and instant.
Great for gaming
With the largest list of games offered by any media streaming device, is quite serious about incorporating gaming as a core feature of the Fire TV. You can build new worlds in Minecraft-Pocket Edition, or race at top speed in Asphalt 8, or hold off an alien invasion in Sev Zero a brand new exclusive from Game Studios.
You may enjoy these games with the aid of the default remote, or take your gaming experience to the next lever with the Fire Game controller- a dedicated wireless game controller for Fire TV, complete with dual analog sticks, media controls and lighted player indicators. But you ll have to buy this one separately.
Prime Instant Video
Users and members can make the most of the commercial free media streaming service by Prime Instant Video. Now watch more than a thousand popular TV shows and movies including The Hunger Games, Marvel's The Avengers, Under the Dome, Downton Abbey, Justified, Spongebob Squarepants, Dora the Explorer, exclusives like Alpha House, and many more at no additional cost.
What to watch and play?
You can access a host of games including Minecraft-Pocket Edition, The Game of Life, Asphalt 8, Sev Zero, Riptide GP2, The Walking Dead, Monsters and more. You get the best of content from Instant Video, Netflix, Hulu Plus, Watch ESPN, Showtime Anytime, Plex, Flixter, Red Bull TV, Vimeo, Vevo, Bloomberg, Huffpost Live, AOL, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, and many more radio stations and channels.
