Amazon Announces That It Beat Apple TV to the Punch

The venue for the press conference was decked out like a swanky home theater, from the cushy chairs and giant TV on top of a low bookshelf to the Junior Mints and popcorn at a concession stand in the back of the room. And sure enough, Amazon made an announcement that is likely to change the competitive landscape for digital streaming: Amazon Fire TV, a product that will look very familiar to anybody with an Apple TV. The wallet-sized device boasts two gigabytes of RAM and "three times the power of Apple TV, Roku, and Chromecast," according to an exec who introduced himself only as "Peter." This comes immediately after Amazon's announcement that its streaming service would be the only place to watch the Fox hit 24, which disappeared from Netflix yesterday. Impressively, the machine aggregates all the user's existing subscriptions into a single GUI, presenting the lowest-cost option first on the list of shows. If you have a Netflix subscription, for example, you will see the free episodes streamable through that service before you see the à la carte episodes Amazon sells on the same menu.