Best Buy Confirms Amazon Streamer Spring Launch

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Via a most trusted Best Buy source (now on Twitter), comes a planogram of Best Buy’s May shelf reset… featuring the inevitable Amazon streamer and a possibly new Apple TV (reporting over 100 apps, without listing an existing SKU). Amazon details are amazingly light, with only the brand name and a tick in the WiFi box. But Amazon’s set-top or stick timing does line up nicely Recode’s intel. Won’t be long now…

11 thoughts on “Best Buy Confirms Amazon Streamer Spring Launch”

  1. Cinnamon may have trouble in the market w/out any TV compatibility or any remote.

    You’d think Amazon would be able to foresee that…

  3. Amazon streamer certainly comes up short in this chart :). I would at least hope Amazon decides to include a wide variety of app compatibility by the time details come out unless they want to sell the device for $10 as an Amazon only streamer…

  4. “I would at least hope Amazon decides to include a wide variety of app compatibility by the time details come out unless they want to sell the device for $10 as an Amazon only streamer…”

    I think it’ll obviously have a wide variety of app compatibility. That’s what the extended wait has been all about – otherwise it would’ve been out for last Xmas. Let’s just hope they don’t replicate the Chromecast madness and not ship with a physical remote to go along with mobile remote capabilities. I think they’re smart enough to avoid that trap.

    But the beauty of Amazon being Amazon is that they could ship it for $10. The motto is to make money when you use it, not purchase it. (Now, $10 is ridiculous, but I could imagine $29 or $39…)

  6. I’ve only got so much patience for having a BUNCH of streamers using up all my HDMI ports going forward. If the Amazon replaces my Roku then great. If it replaces my Chromecast, great. It won’t replace my Apple TV. If Amazon is smart, and I think they are, they’ll allow their content to be consumed anywhere, with no special preference given to this device. I’d rather have Amazon via Chromecast probably so if that is viable soon, I won’t much care about this. But hey, lets see what happens.

  7. Also don’t forget how awful the first Kindle or Kindle tablets were. No guarantee that the first version of this will blow anybody away, though you can assume Amazon will keep plugging away (along the lines of the old matra about Microsoft).

  8. “It won’t replace my Apple TV.”

    Why not? I’d assume it’ll do everything that the Apple TV will do, just with Amazon as your primary video rental/purchase store instead of Apple, which is to your benefit.

    (Unless you’ve got pressing need for iOS / OS X receiving, of course.)

  9. Chucky,

    I guess you’re right. I do have a few “digital copies” (ie. Disney movies for my daughter) that are on the Apple TV as that’s how this crap used to work that would keep the Apple TV around for a year or so. And I’m generally happy consuming movie and TV rentals on my Apple TV, but that’s just because the TiVo interface for Amazon is so awful. The content selection is probably identical. If the experience is similarly easy, and works well, I guess it could in the long run become my premium/rental platform.

    The Apple TV does have a bunch of features that would make me keep it for a while though–streaming my music collection, displaying photos during parties, access to recently shot photos for group viewing, AirPlay support… I suspect an Amazon streamer wouldn’t emerge from the factory “fully baked” and it might take a while to offer all of these services, or enough of them that I mostly forget about the Apple TV.

    I do think the availability of the SDK on Chromecast really starts the clock though for its competitors. Every year there are rumors of maybe apps or maybe gaming on the Apple TV and of course they never come to fruition. If Apple is going to do this, now is the time. They might just get run over if they don’t do something soon.

    Amazon could be in the same boat, we’ll see. I presume they’re more likely to adopt a content-on-Chromecast if you want it, and copy features from Chromecast (DIAL, HDMI-CEC) than Apple is. Maybe they’ve got a real shot.

    Boy, its gonna have to be cheap though.

  11. Apple tv using home sharing makes it much easier to pull content from your computer. Might add Amazon’s streamer for stuff I have in Amazon’s cloud provided it can do hardwired ethernet,, but if they make something that wireless only similar to Chromecast
    then no.

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