The ToyBox

Ricardo Bilton & Gloria Sin

Kindle Fire nabs support for ESPN ScoreCenter and Hulu Plus

By Ricardo Bilton | November 11, 2011, 9:13am PST

Summary: Joining the Kindle Fire’s robust app catalog at launch are two major additions: Hulu Plus and ESPN ScoreCenter.

Amazon’s Kindle Fire is going to have quite the entertainment line-up when it launches later this month.

Joining Amazon’s announcement earlier this week is the news that the Kindle Fire will feature support for both Hulu Plus streaming television and ESPN’s ScoreCenter, which allows users to monitor scores and news from a variety of sports leagues and teams. The two services join apps like Angry Birds, Pandora, QuickOffice Pro, and many, many more that Amazon announced on Wednesday. Amazon says that the Kindle Fire will support “several’ thousand apps” when it launches next week.

But the news is also interesting for Barnes & Noble. During the announcement of the Nook Tablet earlier this week, the company made quite a big deal over the device’s support for Hulu Plus, a feature that it noted was notably absent from the Kindle Fire line up. With the addition, B&N loses a valuable (but perhaps expectedly short-lived) marketing point.

With the Kindle Fire launching on November 15th, and the Nook Tablet landing two days later, it seems like the first battle will be fought over which device offers a more robust content offering. That may be a bit hard to discern, however, seeing as the app line-up for the two tablets seems to be awfally similar currently.

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Topics

ESPN, Amazon.com Inc., Entertainment, Amazon Kindle, Amazon Kindle Fire, Entertainment Lineup, E-books & E-Readers, Personal Technology, Ricardo Bilton

Ricardo Bilton writes for ZDNet's The ToyBox. His work has appeared in The Japan Times, The New York Observer, and The International Business Times, among other publications.

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RE: Kindle Fire nabs support for ESPN ScoreCenter and Hulu Plus

fjrtutrjgky 11th Nov

http://chilp.it/189d4c
http://chilp.it/189d4c http://chilp.it/189d4c

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RE: Kindle Fire nabs support for ESPN ScoreCenter and Hulu Plus

eco733 11th Nov

Copying Nook Tablet ....but can't, not enough juice. Kindle Fire is one underpowered piece of scraps of old RIM PlayBook hardware. How about double the space for content or quadruple if you count microSD slot on Nook Tablet than on Fire? How about 30% better battery life of Nook? How about double the RAM of Nook Tablet? And about Nook's fully laminated non-glare screen? And don't start with that Cloud baloney, it won't be available while traveling or where Wi-Fi is not available. You have Wi-Fi at you house? Then you'll watch the movies on your TV from Netflix. Portable tablets are all about doing things on the go. Cloud is way overrated - good for an occasional backup but not for content usage on Wi-Fi-only tablet on the go.

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RE: Kindle Fire nabs support for ESPN ScoreCenter and Hulu Plus

admiraljkb 12th Nov

@eco733

All those items are valid, but you aren't the target market on this one. $199 is for a "good enough" tablet centered on Amazonian "cloudy" services. It is a pretty good value with that in mind. It is a so-so value otherwise.

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RE: Kindle Fire nabs support for ESPN ScoreCenter and Hulu Plus

gagdetscrazy 11th Nov

@eco733 The Kindle Fire seems to be doing great, and is the hottest gadget of this holidays.
Content, not a spec factsheet is what customers want and that's what they get with the Fire. When is the last time you went to a coffee shop, a friends place, or hotel without wifi?
As for nook's specs:
Double the space? you seem to forget they have only 1GB allowed for non-Barnes&Noble content, yet they don't sell videos or music, good luck filling that with books.
To quadruple the space with microSD? yeah, shell out an extra $50 for that, might as well get a Galaxy Tab or even iPad then. Don't get me started on Amazon's unlimited cloud storage for their content.
Double the ram? The iPad2 does pretty well with 512mb right now.
30% better battery life? reading or watching videos?

nook is great for hackers if you plan to root it, for the 99% rest of the population, Kindle Fire it is. 3 reasons why: 1) content ecosystem, 2) content ecosystem, 3) you get it.