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Well here’s something that’s not too surprising, Amazon’s upcoming TV Set top box we’ve been hearing about forever is going to have Netflix and Hulu Plus apps out-of-the-box. It’s not really surprising, because you kind of need those two companies in order to have a set top box that will do well. This new rumor is according to “multiple sources” of GigaOM. Amazon had originally intended to have their TV box out in time for last year’s holiday season, but obviously that didn’t happen. However, smaller video publishers haven’t been asked by Amazon to work with them for their new set-top box.
According to GigaOM, the set-top box will also ship with the traditional remote control, but Amazon recently joined many other companies that are registered to use the DIAL multiscreen protocal. Which makes it likely that users will be able to launch streams from services like Amazon Prime Instant Video and Netflix straight from their phone. As we all know, based on the rumors, Amazon has been working on a set0top box for a couple of years now. And most of the actual development was happening at the company’s secretive Lab126 R&D unit. Which Lab126 hired a ton of people who previously worked on Logitech’s failed Google TV companion box, the Logitech Revue.
Amazon is also said to be using Android as the foundation for their TV set-top box. Which isn’t surprising since that’s what they did with the Kindle Fire, basically forked Android and stripped out all the Google services and replaced them with Amazon services instead. Hopefully we’ll see this set-top box in time for the holiday season this year, as I’m sure it’d be a big seller and Amazon is looking to set some more records in terms of sales, like they did last holiday season.
Who’s interested in an Amazon set-top box? Let us know in the comments below.