Amazon announced that its Fire TV Stick has started shipping today, and said that the stick was its fastest selling Amazon device ever. But it looks as though you’ll have to wait until after the holidays to get your hands on one.
Last month Amazon announced it was taking on Chromecast and Roku, among others, with its Fire TV Stick, which provides instant access to movies, TV shows, music, photos, apps, and games.
While Amazon’s Internet set-top box, which it rolled out in spring, may not be a resounding success just yet, the demand for the Fire TV Stick has seemingly struck a nerve with consumers. The stick was priced at $19.99 for two days last month for new and existing Amazon customers before increasing to its current price of $39.99.
If you’re wanting to buy the stick as a stocking stuffer, you’ll have to wait until January to get one. I ordered one at the $19.99 price last month and as of this morning the scheduled delivery date was Jan. 9. For new orders, the delivery date was currently pegged at Jan. 15.
Amazon said in today’s release that new orders for the dongle would be filled on a first-come, first-served basis.
“Fire TV Stick has been our most successful device launch ever,” said Dave Limp, Senior Vice President, Amazon Devices. “We built a ton of these, but customer demand still outpaced our supply. We’re excited by the overwhelming customer response and the team is working hard to build more as quickly as possible.”
Users of the stick can backup their video content or pictures from their phones to Amazon Cloud Drive in order to provision them onto their Fire TV Sticks.
Back when the stick was announced, Amazon took direct aim at Chromecast by claiming that its dual core processor had 50 percent more processing power and two times the memory of a Chromecast stick. Compared to Roku, Amazon said the Fire TV Stick had six times the processing power and two times the memory. Chromecast typically sells for $35 while Roku’s Streaming Stick cost $49.
The Amazon dongle connects to HDMI ports on the back of HD TVs. The stick also includes a remote and an app that supports voice search on Fire and Android phones with iPhones to follow. Amazon said the stick allows users to “fling” movies and TV shows from Fire tablets and Fire phones to the Fire TV Sticks and then to their TVs.
Like the Internet set-top box, the stick, which uses the same Fire TV interface, provides access to services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Instant Video, Hulu Plus, WatchESPN, NBA Game Time, Prime Music, Spotify, Pandora, Vevo, Plex, A&E, PBS, PBS Kids, Watch Disney Channel, and YouTube.com.
