No edit summary |
No edit summary |
||
| Line 19: | Line 19: | ||
|channel trailer = [[File:Free Your TV Real Families Switch to Streaming|210px]] |
|channel trailer = [[File:Free Your TV Real Families Switch to Streaming|210px]] |
||
|most viewed video = [[File:Hallo Grundig OLED - Fire TV Edition ( 15) - Germany|210px]] |
|most viewed video = [[File:Hallo Grundig OLED - Fire TV Edition ( 15) - Germany|210px]] |
||
| − | |first video = [[File:Introducing Element 4K Ultra HD Smart TV – Amazon Fire TV |
+ | |first video = [[File:Introducing Element 4K Ultra HD Smart TV – Amazon Fire TV Edition|210 px]] |
|wiki = |
|wiki = |
||
}} |
}} |
||
Revision as of 12:32, 22 August 2020
Amazon Fire TV is a line of digital media player and micro consoles developed by Amazon. The devices are small network appliances that deliver digital audio and video content streamed via the Internet to a connected high-definition television. They also allow users to access local content and to play video games with the included remote control or another game controller, or by using a mobile app remote control on another device.
The device comes in two form factors: Fire TV Cube, a set-top box with embedded Amazon Echo smart speaker and the Fire TV Stick, an HDMI plug-in stick with lesser specifications than the contemporaneous generation boxes.
The first-generation Fire TV device featured 2 GB of RAM, MIMO dual-band Wi-Fi, and a Bluetooth remote control with a microphone for voice search. It supported 1080p streaming and Dolby Digital Plus 7.1 surround sound but was dependent on internet bandwidth of the user. Unveiled on April 2, 2014, the Amazon Fire TV (1st Generation) was made available for purchase in the US the same day for US$99 and was launched with a video game called Sev Zero. The second-generation version was released in 2015, adding 4K resolution support.
In September 2018, Amazon announced the Fire TV Recast, a digital video recorder which works with an HD antenna to record shows for later viewing on a Fire TV or an Amazon Echo Show device. It is designed for use with over-the-air TV services and is a part of the cord-cutting movement.
Product history
Original
The first Fire TV offers HDMI audio, with support for Dolby Digital Plus and 7.1 surround sound pass-through, along with an Ethernet port and a USB 2.0 port. According to Amazon, the Fire TV is designed to outpace competitors like the Apple TV and Roku in performance: The 0.72-inch-thick box features a 1.7 GHz quad-core CPU (Qualcomm Snapdragon 8064), 2 GB of RAM and 8 GB of internal storage, along with a dual-band wireless radio for 1080p streaming over 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi and a 10/100 ethernet connection. The company said that it does not intend the Fire TV to compete with gaming consoles; instead, its gaming capabilities are geared toward people who do not already own a console but may play games on a smartphone or tablet. It has a dedicated controller accessory.
The second-generation Fire TV was released in late 2015. This version has 4K resolution support, improved processor performance, and a MediaTek 8173C chipset to support H.265 (HEVC), VP8, and VP9 codecs. Wireless hardware upgrades include a dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi with 2x2 MIMO and Bluetooth 4.1.
The third-generation Fire TV was released in 2017; it eschews the previous set-top box design for a small, diamond-shaped "pendant" reminiscent of the Fire TV Stick, which is hung from a short HDMI cable. It contains a slower processor, but more RAM than the second-generation Fire TV, and also has support for 4K resolution streaming, Dolby Atmos, and HDR10.
Cube
The Fire TV Cube was released in June 2018. It is similar in function to the third-generation Fire TV, but also includes embedded Alexa functionality similar to the Amazon Echo smart speaker line, and can use HDMI-CEC and an IR blaster to control other devices with voice commands. As its voice functionality is integrated into the device itself, the Fire TV Cube does not include the voice remote. The device uses a 1.5 GHz quad-core ARM 4xCA53 processor, 2 GB RAM, and 16 GB storage.
The second-generation Fire TV Cube was unveiled in September 2019, featuring a hexa-core processor, "Local Voice Control" (which allows client-side recognition of common voice commands to improve response time), and support for Dolby Vision and HDR10+.
Stick
On November 19, 2014, Amazon released the Fire TV Stick, a smaller dongle version of the Fire TV that plugs into an HDMI port. It retains much of the functionality of the larger Fire TV. It has 1 GB of RAM, 8 GB of internal storage, weighs 0.9 oz. (25.1 g), and it uses a Broadcom BCM28155 1.0 GHz Cortex-A9 processor and a Broadcom VideoCore IV GPU. Wireless hardware includes a dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi with 2x2 MIMO and Bluetooth 3.0. The Fire TV Stick is bundled with a remote control, in either of two variants: one with Alexa voice search and one without Alexa.
On October 20, 2016, Amazon released the Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote. Other than the new remote, the updates include MediaTek MT8127D Quad-core ARM 1.3 GHz processor with a Mali-450 MP4 GPU, and support for the H.265 (HEVC) codec. Wireless hardware upgrades includes a dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi with 2x2 MIMO and Bluetooth 4.1. It retains the 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage and weighs slightly more at 1.1 oz. (32.0 g).
In October 2018, Amazon unveiled the Fire TV Stick 4K, which succeeded the third-generation Fire TV. It is upgraded to a 1.7 GHz quad-core processor and supports 4K output, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, and hardware-accelerated MPEG-2 decoding. It also includes an updated voice remote that contains an infrared emitter and buttons for controlling TV power and volume (which can also be controlled with voice commands). The remote is backward compatible with previous Fire TV models, and also sold separately as an upgrade.
