An afternoon with the Fire TV

We came away relatively impressed with the Fire TV during our brief hands-on. But we all know that units set up specifically for press demonstrations are hardly the best indicator of how a device will function in the real world. So we immediately went back our lair and began putting the newest kid on the streaming block through its paces. Once away from the carefully controlled demonstration area, it became clear that the Fire TV is more of a mixed bag — and still tied to its Android / Google TV roots — than Amazon would like you to believe.

When you first plug in your Fire TV you’re treated to a rather lengthy instructional video hosted by a sketchy (as in crudely drawn, not as in disreputable) man. Most of the functions are pretty straight forward, but it’s a nice touch, especially for the less tech savvy out there. The Fire TV is definitely a streaming set-top box you could give to your grandmother. It certainly helps that the whole UI is intelligently designed and extremely intuitive. Our only major complaint from an interface standpoint is that it can be a little busy at times. All the large images and tile-like collections of apps and movies that populate the Home tab are pretty, but a little distracting. Still, it’s responsive and we didn’t encounter a single stutter over the course of an afternoon spent installing several apps, a game or two and streaming plenty of movies, TV shows, YouTube clips and music.

One feature that we felt let down a little by was ASAP. While it was flawless during the demonstrations both on and off stage at Amazon’s New York event, things weren’t quite as smooth back in the dark recesses of Engadget HQ. The first title we fired up simply failed to play at all, while the Blair Witch Project took a full 36 seconds to start. On the other hand, The Avengers only displayed a loading screen for roughly one second and after that we were able to bounce around the movie seamlessly. And when we backed out to the menu and picked Skyfall from the suggested titles it started up instantly, just like it did during the demo. It seems that maybe we needed to let the Fire TV warm up first.

We are extremely happy to report that multitasking is not only possible, the hardware appears more than capable of handling it. We were able to fire up our favorite Pandora station then drop out to the main menu, install Sev Zero and play through the entire first level without dropping a frame or causing the audio to skip. Obviously playing a song in the background isn’t particularly taxing, but it’s likely to be the only time you make use of the Fire TV’s multitasking ability.

Nothing highlights both the strengths and weaknesses of Amazon’s set-top quite like the app selection. Plenty of major services are represented — though a few of their apps are just ported Google TV products. While that certainly made it easy for companies to get on board with the new platform, the results often leave something to be desired. The YouTube app even preserves the indicators for keyboard shortcuts, despite the fact that you can’t currently use a keyboard with the Fire TV.

Even search left us with some mixed feelings. The voice search functions almost flawlessly — it’s fast, accurate and always just a button press away. But sometimes voice search can be tripped up by foreign or gibberish words. (Just try getting it to recognize Suspiria.) Or, perhaps you’re one of the millions of people out there with a speech disorder or impediment. Then you’ll have to rely on text search, and while Amazon was eager to poke fun at Roku’s on screen keyboard and compared it to entering your high score on an NES, the Fire TV solution is even more onerous. First, you’ll have to move up to the search tab on the left side, then over to the right to search interface, then up again to access the text search (it defaults to voice). Then you’re presented with a carousel of letters that you must scroll through from A-Z, punching in each one manually.

In general it seems like the good outweighs the bad on the Fire TV, but — likely for the sake of expediency — it’s clear there were a few questionable decisions made. We’ll withhold judgement though until our full review.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Amazon

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Sky’s new ‘Buy & Keep’ movie store ties a DVD to every download

After years serving only movie rentals, Sky is to finally let Sky Store customers download and keep films in its catalog. Following an earlier expansion that saw it open the marketplace to everyone in the UK, the media giant today confirmed the launch of its “Buy & Keep” streaming service, complete with a physical twist. Differentiating itself from Amazon Instant Video, which offers the opposite service the US, the company will let Sky TV subscribers not only retain copies of 200+ digital movies on offer, it’ll also send the original disc through the post too. The DVD (not Blu-ray) will be included in the original price, which will range from £7.99 to £13.99 at launch. Customers with connected Sky+HD boxes will be the first to take advantage of the new service when it goes live in the “coming weeks,” rolling out to smartphones and tablets later in the year. Sky says it will also expand “Buy & Keep” to those without a subscription in the future, launching a multi-pronged attack against its UK rivals when it does.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Via: Sky Press

Source: Sky Store

Switched On: Amazon’s Puzzling Prime Directive

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

Apple makes its money by selling devices. As such, it’s incentivized to have content — or at least the delivery of it — exclusive to its devices. For years, the company implemented DRM (digital rights management) on music sold through iTunes. It fought such restrictions, but nonetheless benefited from them. Even today it proclaims its leadership position in the number of applications available for its platforms; many of these arrive on the iPhone exclusively, at least for a while.

Netflix, on the other hand, makes its money selling content subscriptions. As such, it’s incentivized to have its content available on all suitable devices that consumers use. Indeed, the streaming company has covered an unmatched number of displays. One can access the service from PCs and Macs; iOS, Android and Windows devices; nearly every connected TV and Blu-ray player; major game consoles; Chrome devices; TiVo; and Apple TV. The Roku broadband video box began as a product that ran only Netflix.

Netflix is even available on the Kindle Fire, the tablet from its closest competitor in the broadband video subscription service in the US. While Netflix is generally believed to be far ahead of the service from the online retailer, Amazon is fighting hard. It’s signing distribution deals, producing original content, adding metadata via X-Ray and even allowing downloads of some titles on its Kindle Fire HDX.

Amazon Prime Video is available on iOS devices in addition to its Kindle Fire tablets, but unlike other Amazon apps like Kindle and its music store, it’s not available on other Android tablets or phones. While one could dismiss Android tablets, noting that Amazon already covers a lot of that ground with the Fire, it’s tough to ignore the penetration of Android phones, particularly such hot-selling devices as Samsung’s Galaxy S series. This is not an installed base like Windows Phone, where an app developer could rationalize abstaining by citing low share. And even if Amazon were to launch its own phone — as it’s rumored to be preparing to do — it would only be able to gain a small part of the addressable market in the next few years even if it was very successful.

So, is Amazon a device company that wants its service available as an advantage to its devices? Or is it a content-distribution company that wants its content broadly available?

So, is Amazon a device company that wants its service available as an advantage to its devices? Or is it a content-distribution company that wants its content broadly available? Judging from Jeff Bezos’ comments, the company doesn’t make much money when someone buys a Kindle device, but does when someone uses it. (“Using” in this case meaning “buying content.”) But there would be even less of a barrier to using that content if Amazon made it available to tens of millions of people who could easily access it if only Amazon would make some user interface tweaks to what is already an existing Android application and make it more broadly available.

There may be one other wild card to Amazon’s reluctance to make Prime Video more broadly available. The company has been rumored to be working on a television add-on. Much as Apple TV fits into Apple’s iTunes store and iOS devices, such a box (or dongle) — which would compete with Apple TV, Roku and Chromecast — would presumably work seamlessly with the Kindle Fire and potential Amazon phones. As Amazon’s hardware ambitions grow, it will have to weigh a unified user experience at the price of choice and flexibility — a quintessential dilemma faced by companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft.

Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research, a technology, media and telecom advisory firm, and founder of Backerjack, which covers crowdfunded product innovation. He blogs at Techspressive.

Filed under: Misc, Internet, Amazon

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