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Amazon’s announced a great new update for their TV products, which include the Amazon Fire TV and Amazon Fire TV Stick. The two biggest features users will care about is support for expandable storage via the device’s USB port, as well as the ability to listen to your content using Bluetooth wireless headphones.
There’s also a neat feature that’ll easily allow you to bypass web authentication processes when you connect the Fire TV and TV Stick to certain public WiFi hotspots (such as those found in hotels, universities and coffee shops). Here’s the full list of what’s coming:
- Expandable USB storage on Amazon Fire TV—You can now use a connected USB mass storage device to expand your Fire TV storage for downloaded apps and games—this enables you to have more games downloaded for easy access.
- Connect to your hotel or dorm room Wi-Fi with captive portal support out of the box—Take your favorite movies, TV shows, games, and more with you away from home—Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick are the first streaming media devices to enable you to connect to Wi-Fi that requires web authentication—this includes Wi-Fi at most major hotels, as well as some universities.
- Private listening on Fire TV—Enjoy favorite movies and TV shows after the kids go to sleep, without worrying about waking them up. Support for wireless Bluetooth headphones to Fire TV lets you listen to your movie, TV show, or music without bothering others in your household.
- Browse and search Prime Playlists—Prime members can now take advantage of hand-crafted Prime Music playlists directly from Fire TV and Fire TV Stick—there are hundreds of expertly curated Prime Playlists to choose from based on your mood, activity or even artist or decade of choice.
- Hidden PIN entry—With the new PIN entry screen that hides the numbers selected, you can now make sure your kids (or freeloading friends) can’t see your device PIN as you enter it on-screen to confirm a purchase on Fire TV or Fire TV Stick.
- New shortcuts—Quickly put your Fire TV or Fire TV Stick to sleep or enable display mirroring by pressing and holding the Home button on your remote.
There’s no exact date for the update’s release just yet, though Amazon promises it’ll be along within the coming weeks. Oh, and folks in the UK and Germany who prefer the stick-shaped variant will be happy to know that you can now order one, but it won’t be shipping until April 15th.
[via Amazon]
I’m still waiting on HBOGo which they’ve promised.
But is has HBOGO….where’s my external hdd support to play video files at though?
This update adds external hdd Support
Edit: stupid autocorrect
I have the stick and still don’t have a purpose for it…
I’ll give you $5 for it.
This is great, if somewhat late news. Is it TLTL, though, what with the likes of Shield TV just round the corner?
Also, will the expandable memory allow “app to usb” features, that the ouya already has?
How about adding support for AC3 audio pass-through and a voice search API for 3rd party developers? I returned my FireTV for this very reason.