Are you embarrassed by the plus sign Apple TV lost earlier this week? Well, good news: this neglected word now has a new home thanks to Amazon.
Starting today, the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K is now called Fire TV Stick 4K Plus— not the “+” that the Apple TV streaming service removed, but close enough.
In a statement to TechHive, Amazon was careful to note that the Fire Stick 4K Plus does not have any new or additional features; instead we are simply talking about a new name, nothing more.
The reason for the (somewhat random) name change is to “help customers differentiate between” the Fire TV Stick 4K Plus and the new model. Fire TV Stick 4K Choiceswhich Amazon unveiled during its big fall hardware event late last month.
The $39.99 Fire TV Stick 4K Select is at the low end of Amazon's three Fire TV 4K trims, while the $49.99 Fire TV 4K Plus takes Select's features (including 4K HDR output) and adds Dolby Vision HDR as well as Dolby Atmos audio.
Then there's the Elite option for $59.99. Fire TV Stick Maxwhich offers support for Wi-Fi 6e (compared to Wi-Fi 5 and 6 for the Fire TV Stick Select and Plus, respectively), 16GB of internal storage (twice as much as the other two sticks) and Fire TV Ambient Experience, which provides customizable Alexa widgets, the ability to turn your TV screen into a photo frame and “dynamic art,” which changes depending on the ambient lighting in the room, the current weather and the time of day.
There are also a couple of other Fire TV players: Fire TV Stick HD ($34.99), which does not support 4K streaming, and Fire TV cube ($139.99), a larger cube-sized streaming player that can control TV components using voice commands.
Streaming service and device name changes have become something of an event over the past few months. Last summer HBO Max has returned its old name (it was briefly renamed “Max”), while Paramount+ Removes 'Showtime' Branding disable some subscription levels.
Just Monday, Apple announced that its streaming service Apple TV+ will now be called simply “Apple TV”, similar (some would say too similar) to the Apple TV 4K streaming box.
This story is part TechHive's review of the best streaming media players.
