Kindle Fire tablet and Fire TV sale - special combo price is was $79 off. The last Fire TV with tablet bundling combo lasted for one day, but this one is noted as a Father's Day deal, (Updated May 16]

New banner appearing today on an Amazon Kindle Fire page  Here's the text:

Father's Day Deals: Up to $40 Off Kindle Fire tablets

or $79 Off Amazon Fire TV with Kindle Fire HDX 7" 16GB Bundle $328 $249.  Limit 1 per customer.

UPDATE: After Father's day (May 15), the price of the combo Fire TV and 16G Kindle Fire HD 7" tablet is $30 higher than the pre-Father's day sale.  It's $279 rather than $249 as of May 16.

  The Kindle Fire tablets' sale prices are also ended, returnedback up to the regular pricing.


[The rest below is from the original blog article for the sale as of that day.]

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The first deal is for tablets alone and it starts with the 7" HD model and includes the 8.9" HDX.
  Prices shown are for models with 'special offers' on the lockscreen and represent models with increasing storage capacity:
  * New Kindle Fire HD 7" 2nd Gen - $139/169  $119/$129 [See "NOTE" below)
  * Kindle Fire HDX 7" - $229/269/309  $199/239/279   (More w/ 4G-LTE cellular network access)
  * Kindle Fire HDX 8.9" - $379/420/479  $339/389/439   (More w/ 4G-LTE cellular network access)
  * Kindle Fire HD 8.9" 1st Gen (Yr 2012) - $269/229  $229/229 (No sale on 32GB model)

  NOTE: The lower-cost HD 7" 2nd Gen tablet shows an 8GB option. DO NOT CHOOSE THAT - especially with only a $10 difference in pricing during the sale.  8 GB is just not enough.  You'd be swapping out apps all the time to get space since that 8GB includes system files with barely 5 GB for apps, videos and books.


  The Kindle Fire family header showing today



  Blog articles with detail on the tablets
    KINDLE FIRE HDX/HD Tips:
      Overview of New Features
      More tips: Things to know
      More info: From later reviews


The second deal is for the new Fire TV bundle that includes the 16GB Kindle Fire HDX 7" tablet
Note that this is a $79 savings that involves a $99 FireTv.

Amazon's Fire TV was released in April and is described by Amazon as a "Streaming 1080p media player with voice search, Netflix, [Hulu Plus also], Amazon Prime Instant Video, games, and more."
  The Fire TV ALONE (not bundled with a tablet) is described in detail on its normal solo product page, but the bundled or combo deal is on its own page and is being called a deal, so the 'bundled' page may not always be available.

  You can use any current (Year 2013) Kindle Fire tablet to 'mirror' onto your HDTV (to share with others or just to see it on a large HDTV) anything that's on your tablet screen, whether a movie, tv episode, the web, email, or an app.  And, it can be used to "fling" an Amazon Instant Video to the HDTV where it is run via Amazon's Cloud, freeing up your tablet so you can do other things with it -- whether web browsing or using it to use the X-Ray features with the video being shown to see (without interrupting the TV picture) who is in the current scene, what the music is, lyrics for it, etc.  The display is beautiful, and Amazon built this with faster specs than found on the other streaming video boxes currently and added more capable game-playing capability as well, including multi-player, with the optional game controller(s).


  Blog articles with detail on Amazon's Fire TV
    FIRE TV
      Intro, Tips, More


When the bundled deal was offered briefly a week or so ago, there were complaints that people who put the deal in their carts found that the deal was gone before they could complete the purchase.  It IS a very good deal.

  ONE caveat: For the Kindle Fire tablets, I tend to recommend the 32GB model, as people tend to get more and more apps, and some are sophisticated games, which take a lot of storage space.
  Amazon is bundling only the 16GB model of the 7" HDX tablet, which means that those who are heavy app collectors or those who download a lot of videos onto the tablet will have to, from time to time, remove an app from the device, leaving it in their Cloud areas for download when needed and another app has been swapped out to the cloud if the Fire TV user has filled the space.

  But that's what the Cloud (Amazon's server space for our content) is for.  However people should be aware this bundling is done only with the 16 Gig tabletel and they'd need to watch current storage apace more.
TV

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Check often: Temporarily-free recently published Kindle books
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

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A few thoughts while exploring the Amazon Fire TV - Revised Apr 12 and Aug 5, 2014

Just a status update, revised a bit April 12.

This is following my initial blog article on this, which highlighted the features.

This status update is to let you know I'd been exploring the new FireTV and reading others' experiences with it or questions they're asking, and organizing notes on how to do some of the many things it's capable of.

There are those who never got a Roku, Apple TV or Chromecast or even a Miracast adapter and want to know some basics;  others want to know more on the pros and cons than are seen in basic comparison charts, and then there is some curiosity about how mirroring and "Fling" technology works on this unit, which doesn't require a newer TV that includes those capabilities.

Currently, I'm somewhat addicted to using the unit (which will raise my electricity bill) because I'm into documentaries, and both Amazon and Hulu Plus have tons of those available, but it's the plethora of what is available in every genre in, for me, non-laggy ways and with great sound that's seductive for now.

The voice search works within 1 second for me and brings up a LOT, although this is usable only with Amazon Instant Videos as a rule while strangely reporting a Hulu Plus result now and then too, so maybe they're working on that.  The unit understood my spoken search words from the start (not an easy thing).]

  HBO Go is missing, but Amazon has told a couple of tech sites that they're working with HBO developers on that app.

  Workaround until then -- Since you can Mirror whatever is on your HDX and current HD tablet to an HDTV with a Miracast-capable unit, you can watch an HDX or current HD tablet's HBO Go app and mirror that content on a large HDTV via this FireTV unit.

   I tried the mirroring with the PBS Android app for tablets (which has great content on it), since there is no PBS-adults app specfically for the FireTV yet, which made the tablet app a good candidate for trying the mirroring feature.

  Amazon highlights the Smithsonian FireTV app on the new unit, and it has some, of course, educational full-episodes on it, with a lot of short clips for those wanting that.

  I tried Youtube for FireTV (it comes with the unit) and liked the video quality and sound but found it has the worst search function I've ever encountered.
  Vimeo is nice to have, but its search function is also ultra limited currently.

  My most recently viewed content always shows in the top row of athe Home page, which is similar to what we see with the Carousel on the tablets but without being outsized.
  Contrary to some reports, the top row showing most-recently viewed content includes videos seen via NON-Amazon apps as well.

  Here's Amazon's page of FireTV apps - specifically for the new unit.

  The remote control is well-made, small, and extremely comfortable for me, and economical in the use of buttons.  The batteries that came with it didn't function on the 2nd day although the batteries still had a full charge.  Odd.  New batteries I have did work though, with no problems on the 3rd day (today).

  The FireTV also makes "Fling" technology possible, which lets you send, from one of these tablets, an Amazon video to the TV so that it plays from the Cloud instead of from the tablet, freeing it so that you can use the tablet to just read about what you're seeing ('Xray' feature) or do normal tablet things on it while the movie or TV show displays on the HDTV for everyone in the room, with none of the buffering issues common to other ways of doing this.

  So, since HBO Go is available as an Android app on the current Kindle Fire HDX/HD tablets, you can mirror these (or anything you do on your tablet) to the HDTV via the FireTV box (which is smaller than I thought and I'll have pictures of it on top of my 10 yr old 34" reference Sony HDTV, which is a smaller TV than most HDTV owners today have and you'll see the size of the box with that).

I voice-searched "marlon brando" and got tons of his movies from the early 50s that I'd forgotten about and which are not available in streaming format on either Netflix or Hulu Plus.  Only a couple of them are free to stream, but the avg pricing to see one of these is between $1.99 - $2.99.
  As Prime users generally know, many of the Prime videos are downloadable these days too for the limited rental periods.
  Esoteric finds in some cases.  I even found a government film documenting Brando's testimony and that of several other film notables about a civil rights march, of all things.  I think super movie fans will like what's become instantly available in connection with favorite directors and actors.

  What is puzzling with Amazon's Prime is that some search results get you results that clearly show you that you can "Watch Now" because it's Prime at no added cost, while others return video info that doesn't mention it's Prime and available at no added costs, instead starting the info-display with standard rental cost and then you have to click on something like "Other ways to watch" which THEN mentions that it's an Amazon Prime Instant Video you can watch now if you're a 2-day Prime shipping member.

  Otherwise, on the ROWS of Prime videos that the FireTV highlights (a small subset of 40,000 said to be available) they have small diagonally-placed banners at the top left of the image to let you know it's Prime Instant video.

  It's easier, if wanting to see ONLY 'free' Prime videos,  to use your laptop, desktop, or even tablet, to go to the Prime-Only pages, by categories and genres or a listing, sortable, with details.

  Puzzle: These two pages mention a total of 17,000 Prime Instant videos rather than the 40,000 mentioned in the PR release.  That's because the 17,000 here refers to full series of tv shows as ONE video on the computer search, while the 40,000 videos count each episode as a separate video.

  But let's face it, they have 200,000+ videos, so at least 160,000 of them are items they hope will bring in some money as this is where their margins are to be made.  They produce tablets and now this new unit with higher quality hardware than available elsewhere and new capabilities for almost the same pricing, so the profit comes from sale of content.

  Older videos/films streamed tend to be $1.99-$2.99, and the newest ones are usually about $4.99, which does beat what my Comcast rentals are, and with Amazon's offerings, we can fast-forward (not so, the Comcast On-Demand ones, a limitation which drives me crazy).

  The relative power and speed of the unit, the abundance of good contentthe ability to do medium-level gaming, with an xbox-style game controller, parental control features, Amazon's information-filled X-ray features along with mirroring and 'Fling'ing are big pluses for me.

  I love being able to pause a movie to see info on the music in it (including how I might get it) as well as the now well-known "In-Scene" Xray features that show us who is in the current scene -- much better viewing this content on a large TV even if I enjoy viewing video on the 8.9" HDX tablet a lot (it's ultra clear and very smooth - at least when using cable TV rather than standard DSL).

  Again, with 'Fling' we can see info on a different device (Fling-enabled tablets) while watching the film full-screen on a TV without having to pause the video and place distracting info on the screen.
  It also frees the tablet for other uses while Amazon's Cloud runs the video displaying on the TV for more than one person to enjoy.

  Amazon MUSIC - Those who enjoy Amazon's streaming music from the Cloud, with lyrics for the songs provided for popular albums with publisher permission, will see this feature arriving for the FireTV soon too, they say.

  One thing not mentioned so far, this unit uses the most beautiful collection of screensavers I've ever seen -- photographed in beautiful light, the HDTV display of these images shows the quality of that light.  Now, if they would just add the XRay feature to those so I'd know where all of the photos were taken.  They even have Pitigliano in there.

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Check often: Temporarily-free recently published Kindle books
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

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