When Amazon revealed a torrent of new gadgets back in September, including an AI-powered robot called Astro and an Echo Show that can be affixed to the wall like a picture frame, it didn’t reveal a UK launch date for its latest entry in the popular Fire TV line-up. Dubbed Fire TV Omni, this new device is a custom-designed 4K TV powered by the same operating system found on popular HDMI streaming dongles, like Fire TV Stick and Fire TV Cube.
Fire TV Omni arrives in a choice of either 43-, 50-, 55-, 65-, and 75-inch sizes. These custom-designed 4K TVs support HDR10, hybrid log gamma HDR (HLG), and Dolby Digital Plus. The 65- and 75-inch models also arrive with support for Dolby Vision – a picture standard that’s becoming increasingly popular with streaming services, including Apple TV+ and Disney+, for example.
As you’d expect from an Amazon-designed TV, chatty AI assistant Alexa plays an important role in this new hardware.
While the Fire TV Cube introduced the ability to control all aspects of your television with hands-free voice commands, this functionality is now baked directly into the TV itself. So there’s no need to have a small set-top box in cluttering the furniture next to your telly. You’ll be able to ask Alexa to switch between channels, pause and rewind playback, find shows or movies from a particular director or starring a specific actor, and switch between HDMI connections.
Alexa can also help with all of the same queries you’d usually ask an Amazon Echo smart speaker, including the latest headlines and forecasts, timers and reminders, general knowledge, timings for your local cinema and upcoming sport fixtures, and much more.
So far, there’s nothing all that surprising. After all, we’ve been impressed with the Fire TV series for years and everything above is what you’d expect from a television created by the team behind those nifty HDMI streaming dongles.
However, there is a feature included with the Fire TV Omni series that is pretty surprising. Amazon has included support for Apple’s AirPlay 2 and HomeKit with its new television range, which means you’ll be able use Alexa rival Siri to control an Amazon-designed TV.
Not only that, but AirPlay 2 means you’ll be able to beam films, episodes and sports from an iPhone, iPad or Mac to the big screen. AirPlay 2 can also be used to play games on your TV, showcase individual photos or slideshows, and more. And lastly, you can use AirPlay 2 to beam songs to multiple speakers around your home – with playback synced across all devices – so, if you have a good sound system connected to your TV, you could add this into the mix.
If you have plenty of Apple-branded devices around the house, this means you’re more likely to pick Amazon’s Fire TV Omni series over a model powered by Android TV, which doesn’t include support for any of these features.
Interestingly, despite the support for both Apple standards in its television range, Amazon doesn’t show any signs of including support for AirPlay 2 or HomeKit in its standalone Fire TV devices. So, if you have bought the latest Fire TV 4K Max, don’t expect to beam your latest holiday snaps onto the big screen with a couple of taps on your iPhone. For that, you’ll need to buy an Apple TV.
Fire TV Omni series is available to buy in the United States right now, but there’s no word on when we’ll see a worldwide release. Unfortunately, UK fans will have to make do with a Fire TV Stick plugged into their current telly for the time being. This isn’t the first time that Amazon has limited a Fire TV model to a specific market, with its first foray into bringing its Fire TV software to a standalone telly – dubbed Amazon Basics Fire TV – limited to India.
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