Amazon press release:
Amazon and Best Buy today announced a collaboration to bring the next generation of Fire TV Edition smart TVs to customers in the United States and Canada. As a first step in the partnership, Best Buy will launch more than ten 4K and HD Fire TV Edition models from Insignia and Toshiba, beginning this summer.
And:
The newly designed smart TVs come with the Fire TV experience built-in, uniquely bringing together live over-the-air TV and all your streaming content into one easy-to-view location. Connect any HD antenna and instantly use Alexa to search for and watch broadcast TV, or choose from a vast catalog of streaming TV episodes and movies from Netflix, Prime Video, HBO, PlayStation Vue, Hulu, and many more. Fire TV Edition includes a Voice Remote with Alexa, making it easy to launch apps, search for TV shows, play music, switch inputs, control smart home devices, and more. It can also be paired with any Echo device allowing you to easily use your voice to control your TV experience hands-free with Alexa.
I see this as a real challenge to Apple and Siri, as well as to Google. But I also worry about privacy and security implications. So much to unpack here.
There’s also the concept of buying two different technologies that are evolving at different rates, bundled together into one expensive, inseparable package. How often do you replace your TV? And how often do you replace your TV box (think Apple TV or ChromeCast)? If they are one and the same, seems to me it’d be problematic to change one without changing the other.
Wonder what Apple has planned on this front.
I would love Apple’s own TV set. Just imagine being able to:
– Like HomePod, Always On Siri. No need to hunt for the remote.
– Show relevant notifications and useful information (like Siri Watch Face) if someone is nearby.
– Occupancy and motion sensor for HomeKit.
– Fully respects my privacy. So many TVs these days show ads and collects private information.
With the 4K AppleTV there is a question how much more evolution there will be in that product line. With a TV Apple could put in enough processing power to deal with any reasonable need for a decade. If they included the speaker technology in the HomePo, Siri, and great display quality it could be a compelling product.
Apple will enhance their inter device connectivity so the Apple TV, HomePod, iPads and iPhones work in concert to provide an integrated experience all the while using your existing tv.
How often do you replace your TV? And how often do you replace your TV box (think Apple TV or ChromeCast)? If they are one and the same, seems to me it’d be problematic to change one without changing the other.
Even if your TV has a FireTV built in, you can still get a new FireTV outside of it and plug it in via HDMI.
Me, I use exactly ZERO of the “smart” features in my TV, because TV UIs and UX uniformly are awful.
(I like the TV; it was cheap and is very capable as … a display.
I have no desire to use even its Roku functionality.
[It’s a TCL Roku set. Which, again, never use any of the builtin anything. It’s HDMI ports and a screen as far as I’m concerned.])