New Amazon Fire TV 4K

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freitasm

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# 180690 18-Sep-2015 07:44

Amazon has announced three new Fire TV devices, available from early October:

The Gaming Edition comes with microSD slot, the 4K now includes Alexa.

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macuser

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# 1389455 18-Sep-2015 07:55

I don't see a mention of HDR? That's a shame, since they have content in 4K HDR.

old3eyes

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# 1389501 18-Sep-2015 08:37

I bet the iFans will rubbish this because 4K was not included in the new Apple TV saying that no one needs 4K on a media player..

Regards,

Old3eyes

jonathan18

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# 1389514 18-Sep-2015 08:49

Apart from 4K and (the slightly creepy-sounding) Alexa (neither which I care about at the moment), what other changes/benefits does this new model bring? Aesthetically, it appears to be identical.

networkn

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# 1389522 18-Sep-2015 09:04

jonathan18: Apart from 4K and (the slightly creepy-sounding) Alexa (neither which I care about at the moment), what other changes/benefits does this new model bring? Aesthetically, it appears to be identical.

I have to say, as someone who owns an Echo (Alex in a box), I really rate it, very highly, esp if you are a music person as I am. I pay $20 to have all my music on amazon and can voice control it.

I can see them enhancing FireTV so you can say "send this song, to this device"

If that isn't enough:

From the responsive interface and instant search results, to smooth gaming and ultra-fast streaming, everything about Amazon Fire TV is fast and fluid. It’s thanks to an all-new quad-core processor with 75% more processing power than the previous generation Amazon Fire TV, better Wi-Fi support with dual-band 802.11ac, a dedicated graphics engine, 2 GB of memory, and expandable storage of up to 128 GB (microSD card sold separately).

browned

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# 1389530 18-Sep-2015 09:18

Looks like a good update to me. But I will be sticking with Nvidia Shield TV. Kids loving the Lego games. Wife and I loving Kodi on a small all in one device controlled by the TV remote (HDMI-CEC). Amazon disappointed a lot of people by removing Kodi from the Amazon app store.

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jonathan18

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# 1389535 18-Sep-2015 09:27

browned: Looks like a good update to me. But I will be sticking with Nvidia Shield TV. Kids loving the Lego games. Wife and I loving Kodi on a small all in one device controlled by the TV remote (HDMI-CEC). Amazon disappointed a lot of people by removing Kodi from the Amazon app store.

Fair enough, but I don't think side-loading Kodi's a terribly difficult thing to do, and with that loaded it's a great machine.

Sure, I'd buy the new version if I needed another one, but these changes aren't worth us upgrading based on the uses we put it to: given it's connected to a 720p plasma [only the kids use this TV and they don't care about resolution!), the current device never seems slow so the increased speed doesn't matter, and voice control doesn't worry me that much. If voice recognition/control could be used by other apps running on the Fire TV I could be more interested, eg Netflix, Youtube (if only there was a decent app for this - can anyone recommend anything better than the Kodi plug-in?)...

SQLGeek

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# 1389538 18-Sep-2015 09:30

This looks like it will be the best (only ?!?) way to watch 4K videos taken on iPhone 6S.

No shipping to NZ from Amazon.com, I guess YouShop the best way to get this?

jonathan18

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# 1389565 18-Sep-2015 09:46

SQLGeek: This looks like it will be the best (only ?!?) way to watch 4K videos taken on iPhone 6S.

No shipping to NZ from Amazon.com, I guess YouShop the best way to get this?

Yep, that or a similar service. It may be worth taking a read through the main Amazon Fire thread, as that's full of useful information, eg if you want to root it (though I guess we don't know if the new one is rootable?); I also found this site really useful http://www.aftvnews.com/

Speaking of this site, I see it's reporting the USB port may not be able to be used for storage, only the SD slot; if that's the case, for those who don't use a NAS or similar the new device may not be as useful for Kodi etc (unless you buy a dang large card, I guess). See http://www.aftvnews.com/usb-port-on-new-fire-tv-for-accessories-only-external-storage-only-through-microsd/