Hasta La Gadget!

According to a report from Bloomberg Businessweek, e-commerce behemoth Amazon is preparing to launch a set-top box this fall, in hopes that you’ll consume all of your content through its spin on the now-common device. The company is already working hard to push its Kindle line to consumers, and this box would be for people who don’t want to deal with the fanciness of Apple products, the gaming nature of Microsoft’s XBox, the half-baked Google TV or the little engine that could, Roku.

Yes, this is a crowded market, but Amazon has something that these other companies don’t have, which is warehouses full of things to sell to people while they watch TV. I imagine that you’ll be able to shop as you would online or on your mobile device, right on your TV set. That means that the temptation to pick up that new TV, while you’re watching your old crappy one, could overcome you during a show. One button click and a new TV could be on the way.

Think of it as Home Shopping 2.0. With some interesting programming to watch, of course.

Instead of acquiring a smaller company that already has its own product in the wild, Amazon has decided to build this in-house, under its Lab126 umbrella in Cupertino.

Amazon has been building up its content viewers by bundling it with Amazon Prime shipping for free, trying to entice anyone who is already spending regular money with them to try other things out. What shipping has to do with free movies and TV, I don’t know, but customers seem to be happy with it thus far.

Reasons for doing a set-top box are obvious, with its original content being the most popular on the platform since it launched. As Amazon finds its way to more niche shows that it can present exclusively, the reasons to grab an Amazon-branded device for your TV makes more sense. In the same way that Apple leverages each of its devices to sell new ones, Amazon is learning how it’s done. It also doesn’t help that it has millions of shoppers visiting its site daily looking for new things.

Some could say that Amazon is late to the game, but I see Jeff Bezos and company taking smart, calculated steps to capitalize on mistakes made by others, much like it did with the Kindle, staying close to a purer paperback-esque reading experience.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

Amazon has been investing a lot of its resources into the TV business. Just a few days ago, it launched 14 new original series, with their pilot episodes being available for free for any user. Now it looks like Amazon will be diving even deeper into the TV business by releasing a TV set-top box in the future. According to Business Week’s sources, Amazon will be introducing its very own set-top box come this fall.

The set-top box will be deeply integrated with Amazon’s video selection, including its Instant Video service, and its collection of other video on-demand products. It will do wonders in getting Amazon more business for its Instant Video service as well as getting more viewers for its original series. It would also help it compete against other video-streaming services, like Netflix.

According to Business Week, the set-top box project is being led by Cisco’s former VP of Emerging Video Products, Malachy Moynihan, and the product is being built at Amazon’s Lab126 division. Lab126 has several engineers that are experienced in developing TV-related products, including Andy Goodman, who was a top engineer at TiVo and Vudu, and Chris Coley, who used to be a hardware architect at ReplayTV.

The name for the set-top box is still going under consideration, but sources say that it could be dubbed “Kindle TV”. There’s also a good chance that Amazon will include other streaming services onto the set-top box, including Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu, giving customers more options to view their favorite shows, and also giving customers more incentive on purchasing its product. And knowing Amazon, this product will be priced competitively against the other set-top boxes currently on the market.

[via Bloomberg Businessweek]

Amazon TV set-top box rumored to be in the works is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
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Will Amazon release a set-top box this year? All the pieces seem to in place certainly, between the retailer’s robust online video offerings both premium and Prime (not to mention a slew of original material), as well as some experience in the hardware department through various Kindle devices. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the company will be doing just that this fall — that information, incidentally, comes from three anonymous sources. The device is said to let users stream web content to a set, not unlike Apple’s own offering in the space. The site even went so far as suggesting “Kindle TV” as a name, though that seems to be Businessweek‘s own wishful thinking.

Update: We reached out to Amazon and received, not surprisingly, the customary no comment.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Amazon

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Source: Businessweek

It was nearly a year ago when Microsoft first launched the Xbox SmartGlass, where an app for the Android version of the Xbox SmartGlass was also introduced sometime last year, seeing an update earlier this month which allowed it to play nice on Android-powered tablets – which is a good thing, of course. Well, there was a major cop out of sorts since support for Amazon’s range of Kindle Fire tablets was not available for a while since Amazon’s range of tablets have been so heavily modified, that plenty of Android apps are unable to run on those Amazon tablets as such.

It is then nice to hear that things have changed for the better, as Amazon has now rolled out a version of Xbox SmartGlass just meant for owners of the Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD tablets. Considering how Amazon has laid claim to selling “millions” of either device, it would translate to a potentially larger audience to make full use of the Xbox SmartGlass app.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: ibenX GamePad Is An Android-Powered Tablet, XCOM: Enemy Unknown Coming To iOS This Summer,

Amazon’s just updated its Appstore today with a much welcome offering for avid gamers: Xbox SmartGlass. Microsoft’s app-based second screen solution has been available on iOS and Android since late last fall, but despite sharing a kernel with Google’s OS, hadn’t been made dispensable to Kindle Fire / Fire HD owners until now. The app’s been configured to scale natively on Amazon’s refreshed tablet line, letting users navigate their Xbox 360 remotely, push and pull streaming content, as well as access achievements, messaging and Xbox Music. So if it’s the living room of the future you’re after, you might want to hit up the source and make that free download your own.

Filed under: Tablets, Software, Mobile, Microsoft, Amazon

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Source: Amazon