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As expected, Amazon is updating is Fire TV lineup with a new 4K-ready model that’s small enough to hang off the HDMI port of your TV from a small cable, much like Google’s Chromecast Ultra.
And like the Chromecast Ultra, the new Amazon Fire TV is priced at $70.
But while Google’s media streamer is designed to play content discovered on your smartphone, the new Amazon Fire TV has its own user interface, support for third-party apps, and a remote control that you can use to navigate by button press or by voice.
The new Fire TV goes up for pre-order today and ships October 25th.
The new $70 Fire TV supports videos at up to 2160p resolutions at 60 frames per second. It also supports HDR content and Dolby Atmos audio, and the little TV box is powered by a 1.5 GHz Amlogic ARM Cortex-A53 quad-core processor with Mali-450MP3 graphics.
It has 2GB of RAM, and 8GB of storage and features an HDMI connector and micro USB port for power.
The little TV box measures 2.6″ x 2.6″ x 0.6″ and weighs 3.1 ounces.
It’s sort of like a cross between the previous-gen Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick. It plug directly into your HDMI port like a TV stick, but has a more powerful processor (and no Ethernet jack… but it does support 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1).
Update: Actually, Amazon’s got folks who prefer Ethernet covered. There’s a new $15 Ethernet adapter that’s compatible with both the new Fire TV and the Amazon Fire TV Stick.
Don’t need 4K or HDR? Amazon will also be offering a new deal on the old Fire TV Stick: you can still pick one up for $40, or buy one bundled with an Echo Dot smart speaker for $60 (which is $30 less than you’d pay if you bought them one at a time).
There’s no word on the larger, more powerful (and presumably more expensive) cube-shaped model that had been leaked.
Odroid C2 has identical specs… it would be cool to have an Amazon install on a separate sd card and swap between Ubuntu and Amazon Android. My C2 does a great job and hasn’t been rebooted in 6 months.
I wonder if they will add back the ability to resize the screen instead of telling you to adjust overscan on your tv. Pretty freaking stupid they took it away.
AHH-MMMEEENNNNN….
Preach it brother rockydbull….worst damn thing I’ve run across with Amazon’s Fire TV stick. Absolutely upsetting they’d get rid of a “necessary feature”. my Sony has no way to adjust the overscan at all….2″ are cut off each side, can’t even use the device I purchased. Amazon? Don’t care.
I stopped buying Sony HDTVs for this exact reason. Samsung handles it just fine (“Screen Fit”). I still like Sony’s wired earbuds, but that is the only thing I would buy from them.