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This is pretty much what Google TV should have been all along, but Google cares too much about web search and not enough about what people actually want to do on a TV - watch shows and play games.

The gaming aspect of this will make it a winner. OUYA's big problem is that it didn't do streaming and was a bit clunky. Amazon has a big game library and just needs controller support.

As a parent, a $100 streaming box and game console that has cheap/free games is very appealing.

As a developer, the economics of game development for such a console is not so great, but maybe IAP would make it worthwhile.

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It's interesting how different perspectives work:

> The gaming aspect of this will make it a winner. OUYA's big problem is that it didn't do streaming and was a bit clunky. Amazon has a big game library and just needs controller support.

I think the gaming aspects are the worst part and are entirely useless. Who wants to casual game with an underpowered box on a giant TV screen? Goofy games are fun on a 4-7" screen because expectations are low. On my TV I expect a crazy immersive experience, not "Candy Crush".

Perhaps they would have been better served by spending their time getting HBO-Go, Starz/Encore and Spotify all hooked into their little box. If they want to be the central hub for all things "media" and want to compel people to move off of their existing platform ( Roku and ATV ) it seems like they need to offer a more complete package.

I wouldn't knock it until you tried it. The graphics for games like Bard's Tale and many others are pretty damn good on mobile devices. We all have great mobile gaming experiences, wouldn't it be awesome if you could share that with anyone you had over on a big screen?

You may expect a "crazy immersive experience" but I would venture a guess that you are not the casual mobile gamer.

Does the casual mobile gamer want their casual mobile game on a giant screen? Isn't part of the allure of mobile games that they are private, games that you play in your hand? Why would someone want these broadcast to a giant screen? Does that add any enjoyment?

To me, the Wii U was a failure in this regard. They tried to marry the "fun game in my hand" with the "fun game on the big screen" and the result was a messy, confusing experience.

Possibly. Some games won't cross over well, or at all. For instance, Fruit Ninja wouldn't work. Angry Birds would. Tap Tap Revenge or whatever wouldn't. Etc.

One thing to keep in mind is mobile is a form factor, but no longer a "platform." In this case, the platform is Android. There are plenty of game types that would cross over well. Even better if you could sync state between platforms for a seamless anywhere experience. Imagine playing FFVII on your phone, and then when you get home pick up a PS2 like controller and continue playing that same game on your HDTV?

I think the biggest hurtle is the fact that consumers already have similar devices, and at $99 its not like the FireTV is a no-brainer. If they timed it right, and people are "rolling over" to the next set of devices?

have you ever tried playing regular games with virtual controls and buttons on a touch screen. Your fingers slide all over the place. For most titles it borders on unusable. The amount of touch focused titles are actually small in comparison.

Ouya's other problem was the selection of games. Most of the games on the play store have controller support. You're talking candy crush, I'm thinking emulators and titles like GTA, Modern Combat, Minecraft, and many other rpg and fps titles.

Perhaps they would have been better served by spending their time getting HBO-Go, Starz/Encore and Spotify all hooked into their little box

Give it time. These are usually 3rd party apps not built by the provider of the platform (as a note, my company just finished building Starz/Encore/Movieplex Play for Xbox 360). The important thing is that Amazon provides an Ecosystem,it just needs some time for all the other offerings to get on there.

The SDK just opened up to all third parties today as well https://developer.amazon.com/public/community/post/Tx1K5ORNN...

The SDK is a big deal. According to the page, existing Android code should just work. Some tweaking may be necessary to properly support the controller(s) and fitting to a 1080p screen.

I'm looking forward to XBMC or other local streaming software coming to the platform. If that happens, this will literally be the ultimate set top box for me.

It looks like Plex is available at launch, so my local media library should be playable (with transcoding) on day one.

Yup. It's basically just a Jelly Bean 4.2 (API 17) fork. Should be able to run anything JB can.

How do you know Amazon is forking Jelly Bean?

https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/asb/overview-apps-games.htm...

The Amazon Fire TV runs Fire OS 3.0, based on Android Jelly Bean (API level 17).

You can also get more specs on it here http://bit.ly/1pLH83y

no need to use link shorteners: https://developer.amazon.com/public/community/post/Tx1K5ORNN...

So Amazon's fork gets to Jelly Bean before official Google TV (still on Honeycomb) does? Ouch.

It would be a gateway console for little kids who want to play Angry Birds (which is basically all my 6 year old wants to do).

How is the simple inclusion of the feature the "worst aspect"? You don't have to play games on the device, of course. They didn't force the controller with the base purchase. Given that it's Android powered, I suspect they didn't have to spend much engineering effort on making it capable of playing games.

Also, don't sell mobile gaming short. There are current generation mobile chipsets capable of PS3 level graphics (especially given that many smartphones now have a resolution greater than that big television), and in this case they don't even have to live within the power bounds of a battery power deviced, opening up the high end (they claim it's a "dedicated" GPU, which is an odd phrasing in the era of SoCs).

PS3 level graphics are beyond satisfactory for a huge range of gaming genres (especially given that many of the PS3s limitations were courtesy of the 256MB/256MB memory limit).

As a more than casual android gamer I'm not sure I would call the graphics ps3 quality. Perhaps on a small screen some of these games look nice (like modern combat series and nova) but when playing on a tv at 1080p the lack of definition of textures and overall quality is very aparent.

mobile games are much closer to ps2. Gta3 was released for ps2 and now runs on android. My experience with gta3 wasn't a smooth one, although maybe a galaxy s5 would have a more consistent/smoother experience.

I feel like we have a ways before we get to true ps3 graphics. But I also agree not to discredit mobile games. For the price (about $140) and all the other benefits you recieve from the streaming video offerings, doesn't seem like a bad deal to me.

Well, PS2 with much higher definition. That's part of the problem comparing Android gaming graphics to consoles... they're high-definition but comparable to SD-era consoles like the Wii and PS2.

I was speaking more to the capabilities of the hardware than specific games or apps, and it is absolutely true that most games optimize for the lower end (in vertex count and texture size), so they don't really show off the high end. As higher end hardware becomes more commonplace the standard moves up, especially for things like models and textures that are simply resources that can vary.

In this case while I was hoping it would be something really compelling like a Tegra K1, it's a 1.7Ghz quad-core Krait 300 APQ8064 with Adrena 320 graphics. That pushes about 225 million triangles per second, while the PS3 pushes 275 million. The PS2 pushed about 35 million. Of course triangles per second is an entirely incomplete metric, though the PS3 and the Snapdragon feature similar memory bandwidth (and fill rate), though the PS3 has dedicated video memory while the Snapdragon shares it with the CPU.

Overhead of Android and OpenGL ES eats into this significantly of course, but the fact that such a comparison is at all viable is pretty incredible.

> Who wants to casual game with an underpowered box on a giant TV screen?

Over 100 million Nintendo Wii consoles were sold. Now, we can bicker about how many of those buyers were into casual games or not, but regardless:

The market exists.

The market exists for Nintendo games, not for shitty consoles with the same games you can play in your phone.

comparing Wii games to phone games is a bit of a stretch. They might be more casual than xbox and ps4, but they are far bigger and better than than phone games. Mario, zelda, candy crush, which one of these is not like the others.

Wii didn't just sell Mario games though, it also sold a plethora of carnival games and the like. I mean, the bundled title was Wii Sports, and they made huge splashes with Wii Fit and Wii Music.

And meanwhile, there are phone games that are comparable to the big headline titles of the Wii etc - Bard's Tale, Oil Rush, GTA, etc.

If Amazon pushes the gamepad hard for the Fire TV, we could definitely see it in that space.

Yeah, but I'd buy a lot more "Nintendo-like" casual-ish games if they were $5 a pop instead of $60. Add the fact I can sit comfortably on the couch with my wife and play, and I'm in.

I just hope there are enough 2 player games worthwhile.

Why do you assume underpowered? My iPad 4, which is a few years old now has amazing graphics at higher than HD resolution. I don't know enough about the processors to compare them directly, but I don't see any reason to count out the Fire TV.

By making it easy to port Android apps they could do well with this.

"Who wants to casual game with an underpowered box on a giant TV screen?"

Young kids. There are lots of them about.

PS4 is very expensive. iPads are expensive, fragile, don't have user accounts, and you can't keep an eye on what's on screen from the kitchen while cooking dinner after school.

The box has a snapdragon 600 chip in it, so not exactly underpowered. They also seem to be addressing the 'immersive' segment more than 'Candy Crush' type of games - they mention Asphalt 8 will be supported soon and Amazon has been hiring/acqui-hiring AAA-title devs for broader support since a while now.

> Who wants to casual game with an underpowered box on a giant TV screen?

My 8 year old would eat it up. He LOVES his iPad games. If he can plan on the TV with his friends, he would be thrilled.

And I'd be fine dropping $99 for a box and < $5 for games.

The midrange SoCs found in boxes like this have a surprising amount of power. They are capable of powering games with graphical fidelity that falls somewhere in between the PS2 and PS3. Plus they aren't as RAM starved as those consoles.

The market has so far been defined by the capabilities of mobile devices. That means simplified controls and gameplay designed for short sessions. There's no technical reason for these limitations in the streaming box market, OUYA failed and Amazon might fail but the market still exists. Consumers have bought tens of millions of these devices just to watch TV, eventually someone will be able to expand to tap the couch gaming market. The price point is low, install base high, and the processing power is just sitting there and waiting.

Who wants to casual game with an underpowered box on a giant TV screen? Goofy games are fun on a 4-7" screen because expectations are low. On my TV I expect a crazy immersive experience, not "Candy Crush".

Infinity Blade, Real Racing, etc. show you CAN get "crazy immersive experience" (or near enough thereto that 95% of users won't notice a difference) on a "phone". Given an iPad Mini (retail replacement cost $250 so you know it costs less than that to make) take away the HD+ display, touchscreen, cellular radio, battery, speakers, mic, and most of the flash storage, and you've got a sub-$99 dual-core 64-bit box that ALL your iOS games - from Candy Crush to Infinity Blade III - can run on right now ... and anything you get for that big screen can, in turn, run on your phone when Mom says you have to get in the car and you want to take the in-progress game with you.

There are some big, immersive games on Android. Granted, they're very few now, simply because playing them on a touch screen is not great and playing with a controller on a phone is clunky.

But if the Fire TV gets enough traction there could be more "real" games on Android.

If you look back at the timetable, Google realized the Chromecast was a better direction then Google TV and but all efforts into Chromecast. That's why I'm really disappointed Amazon choose to create yet another platform for companies to develop apps and games for instead of building on one already in place. Games work just fine on my phone and tablet. So does searching for content. I say that as a parent that has been doing a lot of Netflix->Chromecast streaming of kids shows & movies lately. I would like to buy some of the content that Amazon has and Netflix does not without plunking down $99 more and another boz to manage and another ecosystem.

it's just an android sdk add-on: https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/asb/overview-gs.html

that's not quite the same as a whole new platform.

It looks like it could take minimal effort to map controls to the controller or remote. This gives existing android games and developers a quick in-road to the living room.

Kinda sorta. One of the problem points for Google TV development was that its not just a simple process of adding the SDK support and throwing your app on screen. Attention has to bee paid to input interaction and how the UI displays on such a large screen, so things like margins, color choices, and touch focus support need to be addressed (which many apps don't do correctly or need adjustment).

This is why I think Android is going to be an increasingly important platform going forward. It's a logical foundation for almost any new consumer electronics device.

As a developer, the economics of game development have got to be pretty good, actually.

Most game development companies have a multi-platform approach. Either they accomplish this with cross-platform development tools, or target iOS, Android, and XBox/Consoles separately.

Amazon has already gone through motions to making getting your Android app onto their Kindle Fire devices smoother, so I imagine getting it onto the FireTV wouldn't be much different.

So the story goes, you have a successful game that is gainin traction on multiple platforms and you want to expand your user base. Add game controller support to your android version, and now you're in every Prime customer's living room? edit: This is of course if people purchase the device, so that's the starter.

With screen mirroring, Apple TV offers the ability to play any game in the App Store on a TV wirelessly without having to buy a controller. That game library will likely always be larger than this one. Granted, you must have an iPhone or iPad, but I am surprised that Apple does not tout this feature more. I use it daily and it is pretty awesome.

If AppleTV let me watch Amazon Prime video it would be perfect. I use Amazon Prime and Hulu+ for TV, and right now the only device I have that lets me watch both is my PS3, and its UI sucks (plus it's constantly requiring me to download updates).

Amazon added this about six months ago, but it requires another iOS device:

http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/17/amazons-instant-video-app-a...

Interesting that Amazon now has a pretty good motivation to remove this feature.

Why? Amazon wants to make money on the blades (content), not the razor.

Except they are now selling a razor that "works best" with their own blades.

Don't get confused: Amazon will always sell you both razors and blades. They're not in the business of winning one specific category: they want to win everything.

That's why you can use the Kindle app on your iOS, or Android, or web browser. Or Amazon Prime on PS3/4, Xbox One/360, Roku, iOS.

They don't have to kill the iPad; they just have to win every book reader.

Except Amazon Prime still doesn't work on Android, other than the Fire. Kindle is truly cross platform, but Prime streaming video is not.

Why? That's like saying that Amazon has a motivation to remove the Kindle app from iPhones and iPads so that you'll be forced to buy their Kindle. Amazon actually doesn't care if you buy their hardware or not, they only care about selling you content.

Constantly?

http://us.playstation.com/support/systemupdates/ps3/history/

Compared to any other device I use, PS3 updates are unusually intrusive. Almost nothing seems to be done automatically, so I'll end up with 5 minutes of downloading update apps and system updates before I can do what I intended to do when I sat down. Oh, and the updates are often "required", meaning you're prevented from even running your out of date app. I'm hopeful that they fixed most of these issues for the PS4 (hard to believe there was no App Store or Play Store when the PS3 came out).

> PS3 updates are unusually intrusive

I totally agree with that statement, I just was taken aback by the word "constantly."

Agreed - the worst are the ones that just tell you to update but don't provide a button to take you to the update option.

They're using it as an incentive to purchase PS+ - so I don't think this will be fixed with PS4. I find it distasteful being forced to pay to prevent being blocked by updates when all I want to do is watch a video.

http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/setti...

I've had a Roku for more than a year and it offers both Amazon Prime video and Hulu+. (And Netflix and many other apps.)

Have you noticed how Amazon Prime now has the rubbishest films on it for the "included with Prime" section but the films you'd expect to be included are now "buy!" or "rent!"

I have started to discover that a killer feature of the Apple TV is the ability to use the iTunes Music Store. It very often has movies (even obscure ones) that don't exist on Netflix or Amazon free or paid. For any given movie, the chances of me finding it on Apple seem to be best of all services.

The lag is terrible with mirroring. Apple TV won't be viable for gaming until the game is played on the box itself and there is a low-latency controller.

Similarly, I've never understood the purpose of ChromeCast. The lag makes it completely unusable for video (I'm getting ~1 frame / 3 seconds), making it a glorified radio with cellphone/laptop remotes.

Odd, I've streamed Netflix to Chromecast and my laptop video to Chromecast just fine. It may be your wifi connection.

I believe there is something more nuanced going on with Chromecast "casting" performance.

Netflix is fast obviously because you are just telling the chromecast to stream netflix itself, not "casting" it to chromecast. Same goes with youtube.

However "casting" performance for me is even worse than the described .3fps on my Chromebook Pixel that isn't running ChromeOS. And my LAN is fast enough to use mplayer over ssh/x-forwarding... Trying chrome tab casting in Debian on a Chromebook Pixel burns the Pixel up, with it being very obvious that the Pixel is the bottleneck.

Trying to video encode the "cast" tab without using hardware support maybe? I'm not sure, I haven't really investigated it further.

I find the critique confusing, too, because I streamed a 1080p movie to my Chromecast by dragging it into Chrome and then casting from Chrome itself.

No problems. It played fine.

Is Chrome actually decoding the file then reencoding it / pushing raw video frames, or is it just streaming the file to the Chromecast? I suspect the later.

Maybe I'll try that myself later.

Tried it myself. Chrome plays the video fine itself. Trying to cast that tab to Chromecast has the CPU usage on the casting computer spike way up. This is not a network bandwidth issue.

Incidentally I've just discovered that my Roku can have local videos streamed to it from my S3. It works flawlessly.

That is odd. On mine on a poor connection it works like youtube -- it pauses for buffering. But it plays smoothly when it's not paused for buffering...

You need to upgrade your router. I was using a cheapo D-Link router when I first got my ChromeCast and the connection was awful. Range to laptops and devices was terrible and the connection always dropped. I bought an ASUS router for $150 and life is incredibly easier. I can stream HD content from 40-50ft away across 3 bedrooms without any issues.

I'm confused: are you talking about wifi range (presumably fixable by using a WAP that's better than the one built into your router) or the bandwidth of the router itself? Only asking because ISTM a decent WAP is much cheaper than $150...

It's not necessarily bandwidth or range. Some of it can just be the quality of the router implementation. I remember having lots of trouble with a Chromecast (discovery issues, losing connections and other issues) and I couldn't figure out what was going on, especially since I had a brand-spanking new high-power access point.

But I wasn't using my new access point as a router. For unrelated reasons, I replaced the 10+ year-old router with something newer and the Chromecast started working flawlessly even though I hadn't changed anything on the wireless side.

OK so it's not the WAP, but I still think we could differentiate between an ethernet switch upgrade (for local problems i.e. with content streamed from one device to another) and a router upgrade (for upstream problems: NAT issues maybe?). Routers have switch functionality built-in, but since you were using a really old one you might have tried sticking a cheap switch between the router and your local network before upgrading. Anyway, I think the blanket "You need to upgrade your router." advice is unwarranted.

I have never, ever had video lag with my chromecast. It works flawlessly every time I use it. Netflix and HBO Go from a Moto X.

I just bought a chromecast now it's finally out in the UK. Streaming local video from my dlna server over wifi has been a total pleasure and works perfectly. Iplayer, youtube, any other html5 video I throw at it just works. What are you trying to do with it that gets that kind of lag? The only thing I've found which reduces framerate at all is the experimental fullscreen casting.

This is something I can't get my head round. I have a NAS which I sometimes stream stuff from my xbox 360 from. With chromecast do I need any other device for that to work. Or does it go NAS > Phone/Laptop > Chromecast. Or NAS > Chromecast.

I think people confuse the ChromeCast tab/screen mirroring (which is slow and laggy) and ChromeCast DIAL/casting from apps like Netflix which actually just sends a URL to the Chromecast to stream

But even with the latter there is lag for pausing/playing.

Yeah, ChromeCast is a great product and a major marketing failure. Hardly anybody (even techies!!) understands that it is about competing with Apple TV (and now Amazon Fire TV) in the streaming market, not sending arbitrary stuff from the browser to your TV. Honestly, they should have launched without any of the confusing and crappy tab-casting functionality at all and probably called it something different than ChromeCast. The thing has (ridiculously cheaply) solved my entire internet-television-entertainment problem but I've literally never once used it for a browser tab.

as a techie that doesn't know how to use ChromeCast the way it should be used (as you've mentioned) would you mind enlightening me? How, exactly do you use it if not with the tab-casting?

Use any of the following apps, and use the button supplied in those apps to instruct your ChromeCast to play the given media directly.

https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromecast/app...

I don't understand why Google are so bad at advertising and marketing. Probably the only reason Chrome itself took off was that they put a big ad for it on the Google homepage. Maybe they should now switch that ad and advertise something else?

Okay, that's great. But I don't use Netflix at all. I'd like to watch something from VLC, but apparently the plug in that enabled that was killed. Google's so simple its stupid makes it impossible for me to find out how the thing actually works and why I can't try to configure it to work any better.

It's awesome for YouTube and you can stream any local media using Plex.

+1 for Plex - works perfectly from the browser/iPhone/iPad/Android phones and tablets. Great Chromecast integration.

AllCast (one of the more notable apps that supports streaming from local apps like VLC) got its Chromecast support back once the official SDK (finally) came out:

http://phandroid.com/2014/02/04/allcast-chromecast-update/

Per other commenter, you are doing something wrong. My friend has had one since it was released. Works really well.

Have you tried the 'Videostream' app for the Chrome browser? Works flawlessly for me for playing local videos (although only mp4 right now). They also have an Android app so you can use your phone/tablet as a remote control.

I haven't really had a problem with it.

To the people saying they haven't had a problem with it: Have you ever tried to play an action game via mirroring on Apple TV? The lag is short enough that it might be acceptable for turn based games, but playing, e.g. Real Racing (which I have) is a terrible experience.

This is an AirPlay issue, right? For example, when I go to pause a song that is being AirPlayed to my Airport Express, there is a noticable delay before the song stops playing.

It works fine for me, and if I remember correctly the people having a problem with lag had their ATV connected via RJ-45 and switching to wifi fixed it.

That sounds completely backwards to me. You should get significantly lower latency over a LAN connection than WiFi.

Sounded strange to me too, here is the discussion

https://discussions.apple.com/message/24987047#24987047

They might be using the wireless network for a handshake and then bypassing the router entirely with a private network shared by the 2 devices.

Really? Mine is on wifi and lags. My guess is it's like 150 - 250 ms but it's enough to make any game impossible to play (except maybe Threes)

Yes, this. It is really stretching it to say that you can effectively "game" on your TV when airshare'ing from your iPad /iPhone to your Apple TV. It sucks.

Not only the lag, but if you're looking at your TV screen, you can't effectively use the iPhone/iPad screen as a controller, unless it's super simple.

Fire TV screen mirrors from Kindle Fire HDX tablets (smaller, lighter, cheaper than iPad). Not sure about other Android tablets (at least until XDA geeks get ahold of one).

I disagree that this will become a winner. No one wants to play crappy games on their TV, and Amazon can't become a winner with the small population of people who do.

Amazon in theory is looking for more than just crappy games. They grabbed Double Helix and I have to assume that was part of this initiative, and they've recently released several well regarded games in Killer Instinct and Strider.

Wrong audience, this is everything my Roku is but better. Better UI, better performance. Plus apps and maybe some games with a real controller. It is everything an OUYA is but better. And miracast support too.

This reminds me of phones before the iPhone. Yeah, "better" UI, bigger keyboards, more color, .1 more megapixel camera... Iterative stuff.

Someone or some company is going to have to completely shatter our imaginations of this market. Until then, good luck getting any massive success.

The gaming part won't do anything, in France each internet provider give a box exactly like this one, with TV and games. Guess what, nobody play the games. The people that play games in front of their TV are gamers that want AAA experience.

I feel like that last part is an assumption. That's like saying people who want more out of their phones only want to do e-mail.

I have been aching for a large library of easy and casual games I can share with my wife forever. She doesn't care about the AAA games and I'm willing to give those up if it means we can play together.

Also, the standards for games these days is really low. I see children playing total crap all the time. Gone are the days you beg your mom to spend $60 buying you one game where upon you had to spend the next 6 months playing it before you would get another one. Parents will buy a game on their phone and hand it to their kid like its the pacifier of the 21st century.

Not sure if it will be a category winner, but if the gaming works, it will definitely be a winner for me. I haven't owned a gaming console in years, but I'd certainly do some casual gaming if there was a cheap option built into a streaming. I currently own and frequently use an older Roku, but if gaming reviews come are positive I will likely switch.

To me the big questions is whether Amazon will release a first-party gaming peripheral for this device. If they make that kind of commitment to gaming, they'll have my attention. Even if it's a re-branded MadCatz PS3 controller, it would be an important move.

There are tons of dongles and sticks with gaming added as an afterthought. I'm interested in seeing somebody truly tackle the space Ouya promised to deliver - the low-cost Android gaming device.

Like this: http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-53-000894-Fire-Game-Controller/...

... oh man, I missed that detail.

Seriously, Google needs to wake up and notice that other people are doing a better job with Android than they are.

I thought that was the point of Android, to let other parties do some of the work to keep the internet "open"?

That looks pretty nice, as controllers go, and better priced than e.g. the most recent DualShock.

Seeing that it's Bluetooth, I hope support for it trickles into mainstream Linux.

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