The Glade 4.0

A new challenger has appeared! Look out Apple, Roku, Chromestick... Amazon is coming for you.

http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-CL1130-Fir ... B00CX5P8FC

Very compelling at $99

Holy crap! It's likely I will purchase one of these. Amazon sweeps in and steals the marbles!

That's funny that you post this...I was just looking at it a few minutes ago. Promise to do a review here if you buy one.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Eh, at almost 3x the price of the chromecast... I don't know where it has value over the Apple and Roku options. Its just another box to further fragment the market.

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Holy shitsnacks!

It doesn't transmit your watching habits to Google-Borg?

I've never found that to be an issue.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Okay, so given the same price point, much better hardware and gaming capabilities, how do you figure that Apple or Roku are worth consideration over this?

Assuming you don't care about HBO Go or Vudu, that is.

Apple fans will buy Apple. That's not a market Amazon's gonna crack.

Between the Roku and the Fire, for me, the Fire I suppose would win. Does the hardware really matter? Its just streaming media to the tv. Unless HBO got their heads out of their asses and let people subscribe to the service without having to have cable TV. Then, Roku.

And they integrated an Ouya into it. Yay. Now I can play phone games on my TV. /shrug. Speaking of which... are they even still making those?

Either way, its still almost 3x the cost of the Chromecast, and only has Amazon video as a selling point over it.

Although, at least I have a reason now that I can't get Amazon Video to work well with Chromecast.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Because Amazon totally doesn't data-mine.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Your personal preferences aside, this is objectively false.

Eh. Ok, so the Fire will do Showtime instead of HBO, ESPN and Bloomberg.

All the other crap is superfluous for a TV streaming device. It only has the extra hardware because of the gaming stuff. Its not necessary. They could probably have ripped all that out, dropped the HW specs and sold it for $49. Which would have been *FAR* more compelling a product than to have the $99 price point because Games.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Fire TV isn't trying to be a game console.

Even Amazon's own comparison chart shows that the only real difference between this and Roku 3 is the hardware specs (more RAM and faster CPU).

I already have a Roku and watch Amazon and Netflix (and Plex and a few other channels).

If I were in the market for a new streaming device I certainly might consider this, but my Roku works fine, so I'm not looking to replace it.

So what you're saying is, once I get over being excited about the new consumer electronics product all the blogs told me to be excited about, it has nothing to really set it apart?

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Aha, so this is why everyone sad the Amazon controller looks sad:



It does not look ergonomically sound the way it flattens out to the left controller stick. Comparison:

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Interesting. It does have Youtube, which Roku does not (there were some custom hacks released, but even those stopped working).

But it doesn't have Vudu, which as a purchaser of physical blu-rays makes me a little sad. I'd also say a lack of headphone jack in the remote is a deal breaker. After being able to watch shows and movies in bed with headphones without fear of the Cyberdyne explosion waking them up you can never, ever go back.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Yes, I had no idea it would happen, but I have a serious affection for the Roku remote earbuds thing. It makes hearing dialog much easier, without having to turn the sound up to obnoxious levels that the explosions knock out out of your furniture...

Proper 5.1 audio has dialogue almost always coming out of the center channel. Try boosting that and lowering the volume to the rest of your speakers to balance out. Alternatively, try seeing if your receiver has a dynamic range compression feature.

The TV my Roku is connected to doesn't have an audio system connected. I'm just using the TV speakers.

For most things it's fine, but most movies have such a high dynamic range (loud explosions and such vs soft dialog) that it doesn't work well for late night viewing. I find myself reaching for the volume to turn up for some softer dialog, and down for louder scenes.

Using the little earbuds connected to the remote works really well for this. I'm as surprised as anyone. I scoffed at this feature before I actually tried it. Now it would be a make or break thing for me if I were shopping for a new stream player.

At some point, when I feel the need to replace my Roku, I'll probably do so with a Fire TV, provided they add Vudu (and Roku doesn't one-up them). I have so many movies on that service that not having it is a deal-breaker.

Of course, if the new Apple TV happens to add it, and games, there's no reason for me to have a backup streaming box at all.

And they're using Gary Busey in their TV ads... /boggle

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Holy shitsnacks!

It's on sale right now for $84...but it's still useless to me until it has a VUDU app. *shrug*