Lately, I've been pondering whether or not I should get a 4K television.
The ultra-high definition televisions are dropping in price lately, and it's difficult to see one of the display units at Best Buy playing a gorgeous game of soccer between Real Madrid and Barcelona and not immediately go, "I am going to buy that right now."
But thus far, I have resisted, mostly because of a lack in accessible 4K content. Netflix and others have some 4K content, but it is limited. And though I have extremely fast internet here in Las Vegas, I would blow right through my (high) bandwidth cap by streaming lots of 4K content at home. These are huge files, and they take a lot of bandwidth.
But now, things are changing. Samsung recently announced the world's first 4K Blu Ray player, and now Amazon is making it even easier to obtain 4K content at home. With the new Amazon Fire TV 4K, announced today, the online giant is delivering tons of new 4K content on demand to your home.
But the best part? The new Fire uses a brand new video codec that will deliver 4K content from Amazon's Prime streaming service using far less bandwidth, just like the MP3 format helped shrink audio file sizes in the 1990's. It's one of the more important developments in the history of 4K, and it is a big step towards making 4K more of a standard than it currently is.
The new Fire 4K also has a microSD slot so you can upgrade storage space as you see fit. And just like the new Siri-powered Apple TV, the new Fire 4K allows you to ask Amazon's Alexa to do all sorts of things: check the weather, create a music or video playlist and more.
The new Fire 4K releases on October 5, but they're already taking pre-orders if you want to drop $100 and get a head start.
What do you think?