Didn’t I tell you Best Buy would be the place to get Amazon’s 4k Fire TV ahead of the official October 5th release? Whereas I’d assumed in-store inventory was ripe for abuse, it turns out the advantage was gained via online sales. Folks who’d pre-ordered had units shipped early on 9/30. And, as you can clearly see from the imagery below, they’ve started arriving. This slip-up isn’t on par with, say, iPhones arriving ahead of official reviews, but I can still appreciate as a gadget agent of chaos.
As for me, I continue to sit on the fence while awaiting more details on the incoming Roku 4. Although with a TiVo Fire TV app confirmed for next week, perhaps I need another.
(Thanks Crazycaddy!)
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I can't do any Best Buy online orders for shipping any more. They require a signature which isn't unusual. But they don't allow the package to be picked up from the local facility either. I've had several orders in the past get sent back because they would not authorize for the package to get picked up at the local facility where you show your ID for pickup, It makes no sense to me. In those instances I just went to the local Best Buy to pick up instead.
Now any online orders I make from BestBuy I just do in store pickup. For Amazon products I use my Amazon credit card which gets me 3x reward points. But it would have been nice to have my FireTV by now. At least with Amazon, they tell the shippers to leave packages at the door without a signature. So I only have issues when you get a delivery person that can't read a map and delivers to a different street. Like what happens 50% of the time with LASERship.
I'm soooo jealous ;-) Until now, I've had a Roku 3 so am not familiar with the FireTV's UI -- is it different than the FireTV 1st-gen?
I think it's mostly the same as far as the visuals are concerned, but lots of changes to Fire OS 5 -- it's a big Android upgrade under the hood to Lollipop and comes with Alexa voice control, for example. But most or all of the software enhancements will make their way to first gen units. (Things like support for WiFi Direct accessories won't as the hardware isn't present.)