Hasta La Gadget!

Thanks to a deal struck with Epix, Amazon Prime is now home to a crop of new releases available now (and in the near future), including The Hunger Games, Thor, The Avengers, and Super 8, along with Iron Man 2 and True Grit. That brings Amazon Prime’s catalog up to 25,000 streaming selections in all (if you count TV episodes individually). Why not start watching now? [Amazon] More »

Amazon is holding a press event in Los Angeles on Thursday, in which it’s likely to announce new versions of its Kindle tablets. You know, now that the Kindle Fire is all sold out. There have even been some leaks about what that product will look like, and the fact that it could be ad-supported. But the location of the press event in Santa Monica could also mean that Amazon will be making a big announcement around new video content that’s available through those new products.

As Seth Porges astutely points out at Forbes, when a big tech company does an announcement in Los Angeles, that usually means there’s some sort of Hollywood studio connection. That isn’t always the case — check out Microsoft’s L.A. announcement of the Surface tablet for proof — but usually if a company like Amazon is gonna make a trip to Southern California for a product release, you can probably expect some studio execs in the room.

Now, Porges believes that means Amazon is likely to announce a major deal that will bring thousands of new titles to its Amazon Prime subscription video-on-demand service. Maybe that’s true, but somehow I don’t think so. Amazon has gradually been announcing new titles for the service over the past 18 months and is now up to about 22,000 pieces of content. Moreover, it’s more or less worked its way through most of the major media companies already, and is now working on expanded content deals with partners — see its recent re-up with NBC Universal, for instance. So an expanded Amazon Prime library doesn’t make much sense — it’s just seems too incremental, not “big” enough to announce alongside a new product like this.

But what if Amazon announced a way for users to have access to a wide range of movies on its new Kindle devices that they might have purchased on other online services, like Vudu or Flixster? This is pure speculation, but here’s my bet: When Amazon announces the newest versions of its tablets on Thursday, it’ll also be announcing wide support for Hollywood’s UltraViolet initiative, which is aimed at allowing users to buy once and watch anywhere.

Amazon is already an UltraViolet partner, having announced a deal with one UltraViolet studio (presumed to be Warner Bros.) at CES in January. But it’s yet to come out with an UltraViolet-compliant digital storefront of its own, or support UV titles purchased from other retailers, like Vudu.

While UltraViolet holds some promise for consumers, by giving them the ability to transfer digital rights to content across a wide range of apps and devices, most retailers haven’t been as keen on the service. After all, why would one company agree to pay the cost of streaming a title that was purchased from another retailer’s online store? There’s not a big advantage for most to join in.

For Amazon, though, joining UltraViolet means opening up more content that can be viewed on its new Kindle Fire devices. That includes movies that they’ve already bought in older formats: Earlier this year, Walmart’s Vudu unveiled a disc-to-digital program that allows users to take their DVDs to Walmart and add them to their digital lockers for a nominal fee. ($2 for DVDs to SD digital and $5 to upgrade to HD, or $2 for Blu-ray discs to digital) For those who care to take their DVDs and Blu-rays into a physical store, that could mean a lot more movies to watch on the new Kindle Fire.

So Amazon could very well announce full UltraViolet support for all the major studios participating. That would let Kindle owners to link their Video app with their UltraViolet digital lockers, and presto! instantly have more movies to watch. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the thing came with some small credit to incentivize users to sign up and “purchase” their first UV title that way. If so, there will likely be a way for Amazon users to instantly “upgrade” or add their existing video purchases to their UltraViolet locker for a small nominal fee.

But what if Amazon took that a step further? It already has DVD purchase information for millions of users. What if those users could simply “convert” those DVD purchases to digital — again, for a small, nominal fee?

There are no guarantees, of course. And maybe launching product in L.A. is just the hip new thing for tech companies from the Pacific Northwest to do. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon announces support for UltraViolet on Thursday — and if it does, it’ll probably do so in a big way.

Many of you have already heard the rumors that claim Amazon will be revealing a new Kindle Fire next week at a press conference, and when it does, most were expecting to see a larger tablet on offer, similar to Apple’s iPad. A new report is shedding some doubt on that, as CNET‘s anonymous sources claim that Amazon will be announce two new 7-inch Kindle Fires next week. One of these will be only a slightly updated version of the original Kindle Fire, while the other will be a tablet with more beefy innards.

We don’t know too much about either of these new Kindle Fires at the moment, but CNET’s source claims that the lower-end model will come with a reworked user interface. Its price is still unknown, but the person – who has supposedly seen both of these new tablets – says that it will sport a price that’s lower than the original Kindle Fire’s $199 tag. If that’s true, then Amazon should have no problem getting these to fly off the shelves, regardless of the fact that it will only offer a slight improvement over last year’s model.

This unnamed person gives us a better idea of what to expect in the higher-end model, but still doesn’t delve into specifics. This particular Kindle Fire will come with a faster processor working under the hood, along with a camera, more memory, physical volume controls and an HDMI port. This one seems poised to become one of the Nexus 7‘s main challengers, but without knowing any pricing information, it’s difficult to make that call.

Still, this new rumor suggests that Amazon is more than happy to stay in the 7-inch market, and now it has some solid competition to go up against. If this is all true and Amazon slaps a sexy price on these new Kindle Fires, then it shouldn’t have any issue competing and raking in the cash. Keep it here to SlashGear, because we’ll reporting straight from Amazon’s press conference on September 6 with everything you need to know.

Amazon reportedly unveiling two 7-inch Kindle Fires on September 6 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s long been rumored—ever since the first Kindle Fire was released really—that Amazon was making a 10-inch, iPad-sized version of the Kindle Fire. According to CNET, that’s going to stay a rumor because though Amazon is planning to release TWO new Kindle Fires, they BOTH will be 7-inch versions. More »

With less than a week before Amazon’s next press event, several new bits of information have been leaked showing off a new Kindle Fire tablet and tipping Nokia as their new Maps pusher. As Amazon continues to attempt to work with Google’s mobile OS Android with as little Google influence as possible, they’ve been tipped to be working with Nokia Oyj by Rueters where they say that not only will the next Kindle Fire model have either a GPS chip or Wi-fi triangulation, they’ll be working with Nokia’s own brand of GPS mapping rather than Google Maps. The other reveal happening within the last 24 hours includes a couple photos of the Kindle Fire 2 before it hits the press room.

The images you see below show off what The Verge has been tipped is a new Kindle Fire. This unit appears to have a slightly updated user interface working on it as well as a bit of picture-in-picture video chat. You’ll also see a front-facing camera sitting on the top of the long side of the tablet near a microphone hole as well.

This tablet appears to have a rather similar look to the original Kindle Fire with basically the same edge bumper and display size. The unit pictured here is likely a mock-up as some “pixelation” – if you will – does occur in each of the different poses. The border size on each model appears to be a slight bit different as well – it may be, however, that there are two models and one brand.

The image showing two tablets may be showing the 7-inch version of the Kindle Fire 2 while the upright tablet may be the 10-inch Kindle Fire 2. This would lend itself well to the rumor that there are indeed two units and that the smaller one is still a media-toting beast while the larger has a more powerful processor and the ability to work with higher-requirements media. The user interface also reflects the Android Amazon app store’s relatively new look as well – check it out and let us know if you agree!

Kindle Fire 2 leaked photos appear with Nokia Maps tip in tow is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.