So Amazon jumped into the streaming box war yesterday and I've been reading about it on and off all morning instead of doing actual work. Fire TV. Ninety-nine bucks, shipping already if you ordered it the same day. Quad-core chip, 2GB of RAM, the whole pitch is "faster than anything else in this category," which, fine, maybe, but is that really the thing holding streaming boxes back?
I own three of these things already. A Roku 3 hooked to the bedroom TV, a first-gen Chromecast dangling off the living room set like a weird USB dongle nobody asked for, and an old Apple TV (the black puck one, not the newer one) that mostly just sits there running Netflix for my mother-in-law when she visits because it's the only remote she hasn't managed to break. My TV cabinet looks like a power strip factory exploded in it. I don't need a fourth remote. Nobody needs a fourth remote.
What's actually different here
The specs Amazon's pushing are real, not vaporware bragging - the quad-core Snapdragon-ish chip and dedicated GPU are legitimately more horsepower than what Roku's shipping in the 3, and you can feel it in the menus apparently (I haven't held one yet, going off early impressions floating around this morning). Voice search on the remote is the headline feature and it's a genuinely good idea, typing show titles with a d-pad is one of the worst parts of every single one of these boxes without exception.
But the part that got my attention is the optional game controller. Thirty-nine dollars, sold separately, and it plugs Fire TV into actual games - not Angry Birds ports, real-ish games with achievements and stuff, running through the same box that's also supposed to be your Netflix machine. That's a strange line to straddle. Roku tried a little bit of gaming stuff and it never really went anywhere. Apple TV doesn't bother. Amazon clearly wants Fire TV to be a $99 entry point into a game console, which is either smart (get people used to buying games from Amazon before Amazon even ships a real console, if that's coming) or a distraction from what the box is supposedly for. I lean toward thinking it's smart, honestly, even if it doesn't fully click for me personally. I'm not buying a $39 controller to play mobile ports on my TV. Give me the actual console or don't bother.
The price thing nobody's saying out loud
Everyone's comparing this to Roku 3, which is also $99, so the headlines write themselves - "same price, more power." But almost nobody's mentioning that Chromecast is thirty-five dollars and does 80% of what most people actually use these boxes for, which is throwing Netflix and YouTube onto the TV from their phone. I use the Chromecast more than either of my other two boxes combined at this point, mostly because I don't have to find a remote, I just tap a phone screen. Amazon's betting that voice search and a real remote and Amazon Prime integration (obviously deep, it's an Amazon device, Prime Instant Video is going to be front and center forever on this thing) is worth paying $64 more than a Chromecast for. For some households, sure. For me, I'm not convinced yet. I already have three boxes doing this job adequately.
I'll probably end up with one anyway, not gonna lie. I've got Amazon Prime, I buy way too much stuff off Amazon already, and the completionist part of my brain that already owns a Roku, a Chromecast, and an ancient Apple TV is not going to be satisfied leaving a gap in the collection. That's a bad reason to buy hardware and I'm doing it anyway.
What I actually want from any of these companies, and nobody's built it yet, is one box that does everything acceptably instead of four boxes that each do one thing really well and everything else as an afterthought. Fire TV isn't that box. Roku isn't that box. I don't think Apple TV is ever going to be that box as long as it stays locked to Apple's own ecosystem. Maybe in a couple years one of these actually wins outright and I get to throw the other three in a drawer. Today isn't that day, my cabinet just got one slot more crowded than it needs to be.