Amazon Fire TV Stick available from Tuesday, price from 7 Euro

The Amazon Fire TV Stick – so far only available in the USA – can be ordered on Amazon.de from March 24th. “This Tuesday we will make you an offer that they can not refuse,” says the shop’s homepage. And in fact, the prices sound tempting: 39 euros the HDMI stick costs regular and is thus 60 euros cheaper than the in-house streaming box. Amazon Prime customers pay only 19 euros for the mini-entertainment dongle. For those who are not yet Amazon Prime customers, but join the launch offer, get the Amazon Fire TV Stick for an unbeatable $ 7.


Amazon Fire TV Stick: Can be used on the road


Potential buyers have to hurry however: At Amazon one assumes that the first edition of the Fire TV Stick will be sold even faster than the Fire TV Box last fall. At that time it was only four hours after the order "Sold Out."


Picture gallery


+++ Update: Note for Prime customers who buy the Amazon Fire TV Stick: The discount of 20 Euro is credited to the checkout (see picture below). +++


But what makes the Amazon Fire TV Stick so attractive? Once, it is technically better equipped than most of its competitors: Drin has a dual core processor, a gigabyte of memory and eight gigabytes of flash memory, echoing Google's Chromecast (test). The package also includes a remote control.


American Amazon Originals and more 4K planned


Difference to the Fire TV Box: The language search is not integrated in the remote control, but can be used via the free Amazon Fire TV app via smartphone. Furthermore, compared to the box, the optical audio output is missing, the USB port, the Ethernet port and the gaming performance is less.


Gallery: The Amazon Fire TV Stick in pictures.


"We have a lot of apps to use, but the Long Tail is very important to us," he said, Emphasized Jorrit van der Meulen, VP Kindle EU, responsible for the device strategy in Europe, with an exclusive interview with the video magazine. To further establish Amazon Fire as an open platform, a new SDK (Software Development Kit) has been developed that makes it easier for web developers to create new apps for Fire TV.


A great advantage for the users of the stick, which is only 8.5 x 25 cm, is "portable" and therefore ideal for business and family holidays, "said Tim Twerdahl, Director of Product Marketing, Lab126. The advantage: the Amazon Fire TV Stick recognizes in a hotel so-called captive portals, thus closed WLAN portals, and redirects the user to login.


Sales figures from the USA or the United States did not want to mention the Amazon people at the presentation in Munich unfortunately. But it is certain that the Amazon Prime Instant Video streaming service, as Jay Marine, VP EU, prime developer for Prime Instant Video, said: "Most of our customers come across Amazon Fire TV, much more than about Through the app on smart TV portals. " Therefore, one would continue to invest heavily in the quality of the content. Internally, there is a special quality process to buy the right fabrics for the in-house series, the Amazon Originals.


In this respect, the company also wants to take action in the United States: "There is still nothing to announce, but we are talking to producers about American originals," says Marine. In addition, all new original series would be ordered in 4K-picture quality. "We want to provide the best of what is possible," said Marine.


Also technologically, Fire TV Box and Fire TV Stick are to be further developed successively. "Unfortunately, we can not say anything about future functions," said Tim Twerdahl. On video demand, however, he indicated at least that you have topics such as new Dolby sound formats, or the ability to stream 4K over the two Amazon devices on the list. And Jorrit van der Meulen, promised: "The product is never finished.