Amazon Launches Web Browser For Fire TV (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: You'll never convince me that using an internet browser on a television set is anything but awkward and bad, but if for whatever reason you've been waiting to browse the web on Amazon's Fire TV devices, the company has answered that call. The Amazon Silk browser, which already comes on Fire tablets, is now available for Amazon Fire TV set-top boxes, sticks, and Fire TV Edition HDTVs. You can download it from the app store on supported devices. For now, as noted by AFTVnews, support is limited to first- and second-gen Fire TV boxes and the second-gen Stick -- plus the Westinghouse/Element 4K TV that runs Amazon's Fire TV software as its operating system. The most recent Fire TV released this fall can't yet run the Silk browser; Amazon says an update due in December will fix that.

Comments

first

[bigger]

FIRST!

But seriously, why does this matter when everyone has a browser on your phone or tablet? lame..

Re:first

[JackieBrown]

So we can watch videos from "special sites" on our fire tv without having to cast from our phones.

Re:first

[Anonymous Coward]

Your need to be "FIRST" is the lamest part of this article, dipshit.

Re:first

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever tried to use a streaming device in a hotel? A browser is often needed to authenticate.

Re:first

[bigger]

As my mom used to say, "it's better to be a dipshit than an anonymous coward"..

Re:first

[Anonymous Coward]

Used to say? Did you fuck her to death?

How do browsers not work with TVs?

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll never convince me that using an internet browser on a television set is anything but awkward and bad

It's really hard to read whatever happens after those words.

And somehow I think the difficulty has to do with the author's words, not the size of the monitor I'm using. And that's what TVs are, right, monitors of some minimum size? Or does he really think that having a tuner inside the monitor, somehow magically causes web browser to change for the worse, in some mysterious way?

Re:How do browsers not work with TVs?

[bigger]

I think the primary difference is that our large monitors make sense with a good keyboard, mouse, and an OS of our choosing. TVs, at least at my house, aren't configured to use this way. I don't want that type of setup in my living room. These are the reasons that I also dismiss the idea of TV browsers so quickly.

Although, as someone pointed out, 'special sites' could be better viewed on the TV. I hadn't thought of that..

Re:How do browsers not work with TVs?

[OrangeTide]

I could understand the argument if TVs were interlaced, has weird color artifacts (NTSC) and were low resolution (300-400 pixels wide). But a low-end HDTV made in the last 10 years has a stable digital picture and a pretty respectable resolution for text, photos and videos (duh).

Re:How do browsers not work with TVs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the primary difference is that our large monitors make sense with a good keyboard, mouse, and an OS of our choosing. TVs, at least at my house, aren't configured to use this way. I don't want that type of setup in my living room.

Ah, I get it. So this has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not TVs are ok for browsers, and it's really about the fact that you're trying to keep a keyboard and mouse out of one of the rooms where you might find a TV (living room). And then it follows that with a restriction in input devices, web browsers are hard to use. Notice this is about the mouse, not the monitor.

So why are people focusing on the Amazon having some new TV browser, instead of focusing on them failing to sell the kind of mice or keyboards that might change certain users' minds about what devices to allow into the living rooms? There's nothing particularly offensive about that equipment, so it must be a matter of style/decor. Wake up, Amazon, and get this dude some equipment that matches his wife's favorite drapes or the coffee table whatever the hell is going on.

New product idea: wireless coffee table. Basically looks like Dillinger's desk in Tron.

Re:How do browsers not work with TVs?

[DontBeAMoran]

Wireless keyboard with built-in touchpad.

Problem solved.

Re:How do browsers not work with TVs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't last a week in my house. There'd be so much sperm and other bodily fluids on it I'd have to put it on Subscribe and Save from Amazon.

Re:How do browsers not work with TVs?

[Woldscum]

You do not really need a keyboard every day. Once you have your bookmarks saved. For a mouse use the wireless Logitech M570 trackball. That way you do not need a mouse pad or table top. I just use the arm of a recliner. I have 3 trackballs on 3 HTPCs in different rooms. One cheep $20 Logitech wireless keyboard for all HTPCs. Use the Chrome password manager and create one Google account for all of the HTPCs then logins and cookies flow to every room. Very easy to use and the PC browser ad blocker are worth the extra money for the equipment.

Re:How do browsers not work with TVs?

[Merk42]

It's also that unlike monitors (and phones/tablets/etc) you are, or should be, much farther away from the screen. As such elements need to be much larger in order to be readable.

Re:How do browsers not work with TVs?

[JackieBrown]

The even have remotes with a keyboard on the backside and a laser for the mouse.

It's awkward for serious browsing but works just fine for casual surfing.

Re: How do browsers not work with TVs?

[afidel]

Can't use the m570 with the tv stick or TVs but you could use the new trackball since it finally talks standard Bluetooth.

Re:How do browsers not work with TVs?

[BlytheBowman]

If the underlying OS is Android, I bet a standard wireless keyboard and mouse combo would work with it, and you just plug the dongle for it into a USB port on the set. (I haven't even owned a tee vee in years, but my impression is that Smart TVs are generally overgrown Android tablets without the touch screen and with some custom front end slapped onto what is otherwise a fairly standard Android system)

Re:How do browsers not work with TVs?

[BlytheBowman]

HDTVs generally came with a standard VGA input connector so they could be used as a regular computer monitor. I bet this has disappeared in favor of HDMI, but a modern set is really just a computer monitor with a tuner added to it.

Re:How do browsers not work with TVs?

[OrangeTide]

I've not had one HDTV with a VGA connector. Perhaps I bought the wrong brands, or perhaps my region doesn't normally do that. Usually my HDTVs have component inputs (Y Cb/Pb Cr/Pr), even the ones that did not have an HDMI input (very old 55" rear projection TV that I had. no 720p or 1080p. just 480i/p and 1080i).

amazon silk? not just a web browser

[Anonymous Coward]

but a lean, mean, spying machine that offloads processes to amazon's "cloud" (i.e. all traffic goes through amazon), not so browsers can run better on shitty hardware, but so they can see *everything you do*. no wonder amazon wants to get its "browser" up and running on these devices.

paging Steve Perlman!

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve (co-founder of WebTV) holds a number of patents on browsing on television, some of which are necessary to make the sucky experience suck a little less.
He is also not afraid at all of litigation. Wouldn't be surprised to see Steve carefully inspecting how AMZN pull this off to protect his IP.

Silk is Crap!

[Anonymous Coward]

The worst thing about my Fire tablet is the Silk browser. It's a piece of junk and with Amazon locking down their app store, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, etc. are not even options. I guess it's so they can make sure they track all your browsing habits.

Re:Silk is Crap!

[Shogun37]

Well, people wanted an alternative to Google always spying on them. Be careful what you wish for.

Re:Silk is Crap!

[DontBeAMoran]

Virtual +1 funny.

Re:Silk is Crap!

[BlytheBowman]

Tick off "allow apps from unknown sources" under "security" in settings, get some crappy free file manager from the Amazon "app store" (you'll need this), then go to the web to find the .APK files for Firefox, Chrome, etc. from a reputable site, use crappy file manager to locate .APK file under "Downloads", open it/acknowledge warning boxes, app installs from .APK file, then enjoy!

How did the word CANNOT get marked up so badly?

[AtariDatacenter]

> The most recent Fire TV released this fall canâ(TM)t yet run the Silk browser...

I'm wondering what unfortunate twist of software turned the word "cannot" into "canâ(TM)t"? It seems like an implausible replacement.

Re:How did the word CANNOT get marked up so badly?

[b0s0z0ku]

Scottish or West Indian English? :)

Re:How did the word CANNOT get marked up so badly?

[b0s0z0ku]

In all seriousness, it was the word "can't". The apostrophe was converted into an accented "a" and a (TM) sign for some awful reason.

Re:How did the word CANNOT get marked up so badly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some "smart" word processors insert one of these when you type an apostrophe. They tend to pick some other "smart" punctuation that is similarly corrupt when transfered to an ASCII plaintext format.

"â(TM)" is Slashdot's attempt at salvaging the the two bytes of character data that make up an exotic apostrophe.

So, to call you completely wrong, the original word is "can't" rather than "cannot."

Re:How did the word CANNOT get marked up so badly?

[Anonymous Coward]

The word is CAN'T you C'NT! It's the damn 'postrophe fighting /.'s BBedit bullsh't management system.

WebTV!

[b0s0z0ku]

Wowzers! It's a ... WebTV ... updated for 2017!

Web browser on my TV?!

[OrangeTide]

Feels like 1996 all over again (WebTV). Then again it could be 2007 all over again(Wii). From WebTV to Wii there seems to be a trend of announcing the internet in your living room every 10 years. I guess if you go 10 years before WebTV(1996) you run into Ceefax, ExtraVision, and Telidon.

Right Device

[darkain]

With the right devices, browsing on a TV is actually just fine. At my house, we have an AndroidTV box with an "airmouse" attacked. It acts as a gyroscopic mouse, similar to how a Wii Remote controls a cursor on the screen. On the back side, there is a full QWERTY keyboard. For a living room environment to load up the usuals on the TV, that being OTA TV, YouTube, or other streaming services, this is actually quite a good experience for navigation. If Amazon had a better remote, this would be a decent experience, probably.

Re:Right Device

[DontBeAMoran]

On the back side, there is a full QWERTY keyboard. For a living room environment [...] this is actually quite a good experience for navigation.

I bet you live in Australia.

Re:Right Device

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you live in Australia.

Well, his TVbox was attacked by an "airmouse" so it could be South America.

Waterfox for Android

[ArhcAngel]

You'll never convince me that using an internet browser on a television set is anything but awkward and bad

I've been using Waterfox for Android and a Logitech K400 wireless keyboard and it rocks! Perhaps it isn't the TV or the browser that is awkward and bad? I will admit though that every other browser I've tried (Chrome, Opera, Firefox) all felt a little off for one reason or another.

"Internet as an appliance" again.. and again..

[Rick Schumann]

..and again, and again, ad infinitum. They keep trotting this out, and it keeps falling flat on it's face. When will they learn?

Re:"Internet as an appliance" again.. and again..

[lucasnate1]

Are you sure it is failing? Most of the internet is being concentrated into a few larger providers, carrier grade NAT is making the internet unidirectional, and net neutrality is coming to an end.

Re:"Internet as an appliance" again.. and again..

[Rick Schumann]

The problem is it's usually not upgradeable, and if you're talking about a web browser on anything in 2017, that's essential to it's continued usefulness. Also, in 2017, nothing is really ever 'write protected', so there will inevitably be some zero-day or other exploit that will have to be patched. Assuming it's upgradeable, think about how proactive manufacturers are about upgrading software/firmware on appliance-type devices.

Re: "Internet as an appliance" again.. and again..

[afidel]

Amazon has been very good about FireOS upgrades because it runs so many of their devices. And Silk is regularly updated from their app store.

Re: "Internet as an appliance" again.. and again..

[Rick Schumann]

Gee wonder how much surveillance/monitoring/'telemetry' they've got embedded in their browser?

Re: "Internet as an appliance" again.. and again..

[afidel]

They proxy everything for Silk through their datacenters so yeah the whole thing is a big monitoring system. But that's a different question about whether they get updates out to their devices.

The most important question

[bobstreo]

Does the browser support full screen porntube?

Re:The most important question

[DontBeAMoran]

Screw porntube.

Wait, let me rephrase that...

Nobody wants to touch moz://a's browser tech!

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the Wikipedia article about Silk, it's "based on the open source Chromium project that uses the Blink engine".

So this is yet another browser based off of Chromium/Blink, to go along with other ones like the newer versions of Opera, like Vivaldi, and like Brave. And we're all aware of how Blink was derived from WebKit, which is used by Safari.

What I find most interesting about all of this is how nobody wants to deal with the open source browser technologies like Gecko and Servo that have been produced by moz://a.

I can't blame them for avoiding moz://a's technologies. In my experience and opinion, they're inferior to Blink. Firefox 57, for example, has been a real shitshow for me, with it breaking a huge number of my extensions, and I haven't experienced the performance improvements it's alleged to offer. The Blink based browsers, on the other hand, have always been fast, light and responsive when I've used them.

I've tried Servo a few times, and it has been atrocious. Aside from lacking anything resembling a real UI, I've found that it improperly renders pages very frequently, and I also had it crash on me very often. I've heard the excuse that it's "experimental" or a "test bed", but even if that's the case it's still really bad, I think.

At this point, the main browser engine is Blink. Far behind Blink are WebKit and EdgeHTML. From what I can see, Gecko is far behind that, and Servo is basically not even there.

It's sad that it has come to this. Gecko used to be seen as one of the best, if not the best, open source browser engine out there. Now it has become a joke, and anyone wishing to embed a browser engine in their software will likely choose Blink instead.

Re: Nobody wants to touch moz://a's browser tech!

[Anonymous Coward]

You could have included KDE, since that's who Apple forked around with to make WebKit

Re:Nobody wants to touch moz://a's browser tech!

[Anonymous Coward]

"And we're all aware of how Blink was derived from WebKit, which is used by Safari."

Which was forked from KHTML, the engine used in KDE's Konqueror browser.

And here everyone thought Konqueror was just a joke name.

I'm using it.

[Kartu]

Major problem with it is the input, and if you have solution to that, be it bluetooth keyboard or a TV with cool remote like LGs, well, where is the issue?

I actually... listen to music like that (radio swiss jazz site). My TV is also capable of switching off screen, while playing audio.

Does it allow ad and script blocking?

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

No?

Then I'll never use it.

Quick review posted from a Fire Stick

[CronoCloud]

First off it is silk, so meh. From what I can tell there's no multi-tab support. You can choose between bing, google or yahoo as search engines. You can turn on do not track and turn off javascript but there's no adblock. bloated sites can slow it down or lock it up, an example is CNN video. The browser's own search/bookmarks/info menu has links to cnn video. embedded youtube works fine. Even if you have a keyboard paired you'll still need the remote to click on links. It doesn't work well for long text entry because the on-screen keyboard stays up even if you're using a bluetooth one. so editing a post or say a webmail will be frustrating. Navigation uses a cursor style approach which works better than the hotspot centric approach the old WebTV's used. There's a text scaling option which you might need if you sit far away. There's no gopher support, I checked. As a TV web browser I would rate it slightly higher than the old webtv, I'll write more in depth about comparisons in another post. I wouldn't rate the experience as well as say the PS4's browser, which has multiple window support and doesn't show the OSK when typing in a text entry field. And it most certainly isn't as good as say a 10 tablet running chrome with a bluetooth keyboard. But it IS a web browser on your TV, which some people might find useful.

Re:Quick review posted from a Fire Stick

[CronoCloud]

Yeah, I know it's not good form to reply to one's own post, but I wanted to add further commentary since my first internet access device was a WebTV so I'm probably a bit more familiar with the quirks of browsing on TV's than most.

Navigation is a killer when browing on TV's. WebTV's hotspot-arrow-key navigation was fine for simple sites in the early days of the net, but complex sites were difficult. Some would have a huge number of tiny hotspots to move between. So Silk using a mouse-ish pointer controlled with the remote's directional pad is much better. However the silk doesn't have pgup/pgdown functionality, just scrollup/scrolldown which is slower. And I didn't see any "quick jump to page top or bottom" feature either.

WebTV was designed in the days of SDTV so the webtv browser was not designed for horizontal scrolling. In fact it couldn't horizontally scroll and websites designed for wider screens worked less well on it. But now TV's are HD and widescreen so most sites will work better, unless they're bloated up like CNN Video. (which is also slow on Android Chrome)

But the fact that the WebTV came with a IR keyboard made certain functions easier. For example, it was far far easier to access bookmarks/recents/history on the WebTV because the WebTV keyboard had dedicated keys for certain functions. And as mentioned above easy accessible pgup/pgdown/jumptotop/jumptobottom functionality.

There also doesn't seem to be any "integration" with other features. For example, when you booted up a WebTV and it connected it would take you to your "WebTV home" a partly customizable portal like thing that had news blurbs with topics you chose, weather, links to news about the WebTV service, help info, etc etc. It looked like this:

http://net4tv.com/voice/GRAPHI...

While Silk on TV has a menu/info page with links to news videos and at least some bookmarks it's got nothing like that. Or anything like WebTV's Messenger or Community features (webtv specific newsgroups, USENET and IRC) WebTV wasn't just a browser it was also mail, chat, even some limited video and audio. For example, one could easily send a link via e-mail or send an IM while browsing. Though most things on webtv were treated as special web pages.

For example, WebTV's IRC interface was basically a WebTV hosted webTV specific web page that provided a simple IRC interface. Thusly one could not browse the web or read an e-mail while chatting. (Not taking into account customized IRC pages that could be made) IRC on a webtv looks like this:

http://www.fun-lover.com/webtv...

But as a niche product without a large audience, there wasn't a huge incentive for REAL or Macromedia to help out WebTV to keep up with changing standards. I don't think any WebTV Plus unit got anything better than Flash 5 and the early units were stuck with Flash 3. WebTV users tended to complain a LOT about how WebTV networks weren't keeping up with the changing face of multimedia, especially the ones with the old classic boxes with their 2MB of RAM, 33.6K modems and only 1MB of flash storage. The plus units with their 8MB of RAM, 56K modems, and 1GB hard drives were better.

The Fire stick, however, is a media consumption device even if such functionality is compartmentalized into apps and being backed by Amazon means it keeps up with the internet.

One other thing I noticed is how the Fire stick doesn't use sound like the WebTV did. On a WebTV when you clicked a link, popped up the options menu or the IM thing or hit the bottom of a web page, there were various sound effects.

Ha it looks like Net4TV (once known as Web4TV voice) is still up:

http://www.net4tv.com/voice/in...

Re:Quick review posted from a Fire Stick

[drinkypoo]

The fire stick is pathetic by modern standards, so no matter what I'd never expect a good browsing experience out of it. You can however sideload bluetooth settings, and pair a normal mouse and keyboard. However, if you're going to go to all that trouble, why not also sideload Brave?

Use in hotels will be easier

[danciarlette4175]

Makes it easier to use the stick in a hotel HDMI port on Wifi to enter my name and room number without streaming from my mobile device.

Tinfoil hats and UX grievances aside, a good thing

[kfsone]

Remember the term "surfing"? That's not what you're trying to do when you use a web-browser on your TV. This is for things like connecting your plex account to the plex app you just installed, or being able to hand off sites from your kindle to the big screen to show the family without a lot of fussing about and transferring stuff.

This isn't a new browser, it's the kindle/alexa ecosystem browser becoming available on a kindle/alexa ecosystem device, so the "PRAAHVAHCY!" response to this smacks of knee-to-the-nuts-in-the-mirror-jerk reaction.

For those of us who live the Kindle/Alexa lifestyle, this means Alexa being able to bring up pages on my TV instead of having to go fetch my kindle; it means that when I get pissed off trying to navigate thru Domino's pizza-ordering voice-state-machine farce, I have it bring up the web interface.

If this is "one more reason" you won't be buying a Kindle or Alexa, tell me about those aliens...

gopher

[Pseudonymus Bosch]

There's no gopher support, I checked.

Gopher as in the hypertext protocol preceding the web?

Does it support <blink> and <marquee>?

KB + mouse? Re:How do browsers not work with TVs?

[BlytheBowman]

This might be a dumb question, but if the TV is an Android based "Smart Tv", couldn't you simply plug in a USB keyboard or mouse as these TVs tend to have at least one USB port on them? I bet a USB hub would work with them too if you don't have enough ports on the TV itself to plug in both a KB and mouse I can plug a mini-usb keyboard into both my smartphone and my tablet (both Android) and it works right off the bat, with no need to configure or install anything, so I imagine the same thing can be done with a Smart TV.

Re:KB + mouse? Re:How do browsers not work with TV

[BlytheBowman]

^to add to this, they keyboard I have was actually ment for a Windows 10 based tablet PC but works just fine with my Android devices.

Right TV.

[Anonymous Coward]

Reason WebTV gotten such a bad rap was the technology wasn't up to it. 4K TVs are competitive to a good monitor, and have more inputs than most monitors.

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[moh.abbadi92e]

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inquiry

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon Launches Web Browser For Fire TV,how its working

Backup your bs with proof OrangeTide... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Backup your bs with proof OrangeTide https://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11425437&cid=55663429/

APK

P.S.=> See you there (somehow, I don't think I will & you will continue to embarass yourself as you did starting garbage with me - I am going to let YOU finish YOURSELF boy)... apk