Amazon Fire TV is getting support for Bluetooth headsets, expandable USB storage and more

Amazon’s announced a great new update for their TV products, which include the Amazon Fire TV and Amazon Fire TV Stick. The two biggest features users will care about is support for expandable storage via the device’s USB port, as well as the ability to listen to your content using Bluetooth wireless headphones.

There’s also a neat feature that’ll easily allow you to bypass web authentication processes when you connect the Fire TV and TV Stick to certain public WiFi hotspots (such as those found in hotels, universities and coffee shops). Here’s the full list of what’s coming:

• Expandable USB storage on Amazon Fire TV—You can now use a connected USB mass storage device to expand your Fire TV storage for downloaded apps and games—this enables you to have more games downloaded for easy access.


• Connect to your hotel or dorm room Wi-Fi with captive portal support out of the box—Take your favorite movies, TV shows, games, and more with you away from home—Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick are the first streaming media devices to enable you to connect to Wi-Fi that requires web authentication—this includes Wi-Fi at most major hotels, as well as some universities.


• Private listening on Fire TV—Enjoy favorite movies and TV shows after the kids go to sleep, without worrying about waking them up. Support for wireless Bluetooth headphones to Fire TV lets you listen to your movie, TV show, or music without bothering others in your household.


• Browse and search Prime Playlists—Prime members can now take advantage of hand-crafted Prime Music playlists directly from Fire TV and Fire TV Stick—there are hundreds of expertly curated Prime Playlists to choose from based on your mood, activity or even artist or decade of choice.


• Hidden PIN entry—With the new PIN entry screen that hides the numbers selected, you can now make sure your kids (or freeloading friends) can’t see your device PIN as you enter it on-screen to confirm a purchase on Fire TV or Fire TV Stick.


• New shortcuts—Quickly put your Fire TV or Fire TV Stick to sleep or enable display mirroring by pressing and holding the Home button on your remote.

There’s no exact date for the update’s release just yet, though Amazon promises it’ll be along within the coming weeks. Oh, and folks in the UK and Germany who prefer the stick-shaped variant will be happy to know that you can now order one, but it won’t be shipping until April 15th.

[via Amazon]

 

Adult Swim is giving away free Google Cardboard VR headsets to try out their new game [UPDATE]

The folks at Adult Swim games want you to try their new VR app/game. They want you to try it so bad, they’re willing to give you a Google Cardboard VR headset for free. But there’s a catch: you gotta send them a fax first. Once you get past this relatively small hurdle (you can either dig one up from the basement or use one of the many applications that mimic this functionality in the Google Play Store), you’ll be on your way to enjoying their newest title in the Play Store, the aptly titled Adult Swim Virtual Brainload.

Less of a game and more of an “experience,” Virtual Brainlord takes you on a journey in some sort of trippy, virtual, alternate reality. We didn’t get to try it for ourselves, but the screenshots are enough to give us flashbacks of our college days. It even comes with a warning, it’s that intense. Whether you want to try the game or not (and you should), you can find their free Google Cardboard form down below. Just print, fax, and wait for your paper headsets to arrive in the mail. Oh and sorry to our friends overseas, this is US-only.

 

UPDATE: Although we were able to confirm the promo by sending in our own fax (it worked fine for us), it appears the promo — which stated only available while supplies last — has ended. We only hope a few of our readers got theirs in on time.

[Adult Swim]