Amazon is working on its own living room set-top box for video streaming and plans to launch it this fall, reports Bloomberg Businessweek.
Citing three anonymous sources, Bloomberg says the device will connect to televisions and allow users to access Amazon Instant Video, the digital library that offers on-demand streaming for à la carte purchases of movies and TV shows. Amazon Prime members receive free streaming access to more than 100,000 pieces of content in that library. The company has been moving into original content with Amazon Instant Video: It recently debuted pilots for 14 potential original series on the service, and viewership will contribute to decisions on which pilots get picked up.
According to Bloomberg, the purported box is being developed at Amazon's Cupertino, Calif.-based Lab126 branch, a division that Bloomberg's sources say has been experimenting with similar TV-based devices for years. The set-top unit is said to be aimed at the category of video-streaming devices that includes the Roku, Apple TV and Boxee Cloud DVR, all of which sell for less than $100. All modern video game consoles, including the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii and Wii U, also offer streaming video services such as Amazon Instant Video, Netflix and Hulu Plus. It's unclear at this point if Amazon's box would feature non-Amazon video-streaming services.
Amazon's Kindle Fire tablets run a customized skin of Google's Android operating system. While Bloomberg does not mention the device's potential gaming applications, the company's Amazon Appstore does offer its own set of Android games, some of which are Kindle-optimized, separate from the Google Play store.