While Amazon and Roku have gone head to head with their streaming media players for years now, Roku had carved out its own territory with its Roku TV partnerships. Roku won’t be the only company integrating its platform into smart TVs anymore, however, as Amazon and its partners Seiki, Westinghouse, and Element on Tuesday announced a new line of affordable smart TVs by the name of Fire TV Edition.
“Teaming up with brands including Seiki, Westinghouse, and Element on a new range of smart TVs allows Amazon to deliver an experience that’s familiar and easy to use,” Amazon Fire TV vice president Marc Whitten said in a statement. “Fire TV Edition offers access to a great selection of streaming and over-the-air TV and movies, Alexa for easy voice search and content control, and the many other features and experiences customers have come to expect from the best-selling line of Amazon Fire TV products.”
The new Fire TV Edition TVs will include built-in support for over-the-air (OTA) live TV in addition to the streaming channels supported as part of Amazon’s Fire TV platform. These TVs will include a voice remote complete with Amazon’s Alexa, allowing for a voice-powered search of more than 100 different channels and apps.
So far, TVs have been announced in 43-inch, 50-inch, 55-inch, and 65-inch size classes, with all of the models supporting 4K Ultra HD resolution, though no models featuring high dynamic range (HDR) have been announced yet. The user interface should look familiar to anyone who has used Amazon’s streaming devices before, especially since the updated interface the company began rolling out in late 2016.
TV models from Seiki, Westinghouse, and Element will be on sale via Amazon beginning later in 2017, with retail prices being announced closer to the products’ launch. Seiki and Westinghouse will be demonstrating their respective Fire TV Edition models in Las Vegas at CES Unveiled.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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