Rumors of an Amazon music service, TV set-top box swirl yet again

The letter I received from Amazon said it was an increase from $79 to $99, not $119.

 

Yep, $99, not $119

 

Not thrilled, but I do enough purchasing to make it worthwhile.

 

What's really needed is for these online video streaming players (Amazon, Netflix, Hulu and others) to combat the growing dominance Big Cable has in providing residential Internet service. As long as Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, TWC and others control most of the residential Internet market, they have no interest in making "cutting the cable" cost-effective for the folks who want to rely on these other streaming services without a $100 monthly cable bill. And with net neutrality seemingly dead, what's to stop these cable companies from throttling traffic from these services, demanding a much "higher toll" to carry their traffic or imposing low monthly bandwidth caps which disproportionately hit the "cable cutters" who regularly use these services?

 

I believe they and Google are missing a fair amount of sales by going with a Dongle. I have three HDTVs in the house. Not one has USB.

 

You don't need the USB, that's for power. You can use that or a power adapter. The stick goes to the HDMI.

 

They just announced Amazon Fire Tv. They obviously need to check out firetv.com. This has got to be the biggest blunder of all time.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using DBSTalk mobile app

 

So really, it doesn't give much of anything *new* above Roku and AppleTV (maybe a little faster, more memory, but still, the same functionality). The predictive stuff may or may not be good, but because some people have bandwidth caps you'd better be able to turn it off.

I continue to be underwhelmed at new entries into this space without a dual-tuner OTA DVR integrated onboard. The only entrant there right now is the TiVo Roamio, and it comes with high TiVo fees. An *integrated* box with online streaming apps and OTA DVR capability would put me "all in" and would be the Swiss Army Knife of the cable-cutters.

 

The Amazon page does NOT say it has

1. A web browser.
2. A DVR
3. Hulu free, which right now is only on Windows PCs (I think) - too bad it doesn't
4. The ability to interface with a rooftop antenna to get and record normal HDTV.
5. Google Play - so what you see from Amazon is all you get.

It has 8 GB internal - so even if they add DVR, its only about 8 hours HDTV.

Access to Amazon instant video is nice, but otherwise you might be better off with Chromecast, which also has the big basics - Hulu+ and Netflix, but adds expandability through Google Play..

Perhaps this is not the magic box that people looking to cut cable is looking for.

 

Anyone know if this Fire TV can stream local media? If it can w/ out having to go through a PC (to be transcoded, etc...), this will be a winner in my camp!

 

I'd love to see a Plex client on this box. Since it seems to be Android-based, that shouldn't be too difficult. I have a Plex client on my Kindle Fire HD that works very well (when it logs into my server - getting that to happen seems to be a bit of a crapshoot).

For those who don't know, Plex is a really good client/server for local media and more. It's what MS's Media Center (my previous favorite) *should* have graduated into.

 

I don't want to keep a PC running if I can just have a file share being served off of my router. I can appreciate PLEX, but if I make sure my videos are supportable formats, I don't want to run a full blown PC.

 

But, and this is a big But, does it upscale? If it doesn't, I don't want it. I'm able to upscale very well using my Sammy BD players and I'll not regress.

Rich