Last month, we announced a multi-year collaboration with Best Buy to bring the next generation of Fire TV Edition smart TVs to customers in the United States and Canada.

Today we are excited to announce that the first one, the Toshiba 4K Ultra HD - Fire TV Edition 2018, is now shipping. It is available exclusively online at BestBuy.com/FireTVEdition and Amazon.com/FireTVEdition, at Best Buy retail locations.

The Toshiba 4K Ultra HD - Fire TV Edition delivers stunning picture resolution with vibrant colors and detailed contrast in HD and 4K with High Dynamic Range, and is available in 43”, 50”, and 55” sizes. Combining true-to-life picture quality with the Fire TV experience built in, it seamlessly integrates your favorite content on the home screen, including live over-the-air TV broadcasts, and streaming apps and channels.

For developers, this new smart TV adds yet another way to reach potential customers. When you publish on the Amazon Appstore and target Fire TV, your apps and games will be available on the Toshiba 4K Ultra HD - Fire TV Edition out of the box.

Bring your apps to life with voice control

The smart home industry is growing rapidly, with no signs of slowing down. Almost a third of all households in the U.S. used a smart speaker to make a purchase in Q4 2017. With more customers incorporating smart devices in their daily lives, the Toshiba 4K Ultra HD - Fire TV Edition offers a new, convenient way for developers to engage their users.

With the included Voice Remote with Alexa, your customers can use speech to interact with their living room environment. They can browse, navigate, launch apps, and switch inputs, or pair their TV with an Echo device to enable voice control. For example, customers can simply press the microphone button on the Voice Remote with Alexa and say, “Alexa, watch Billions” to instantly watch the show on Hulu.

Want to create a voice-forward experience for your customers? Here are three steps to enable voice control in your apps:

1. First, check to see if you have already implemented the Media Sessions API. If you have, all you need to do is add the permission to the manifest file and implement voice commands for transport controls like play, pause, resume, rewind, fast-forward, and skip content. If you haven't, click here to get started with Media Session.
2. Integrate your media catalog with Amazon Fire TV so your content can be included in universal browse and search results. Users will be able to find your content in the Fire TV interface and play it directly without needing to open your app first. If your titles are indexed on IMDB or Amazon Video, you are eligible for catalog integration.
3. Once your app has gone through catalog integration, you can use the Video Skill API to allow customers to launch content, search within your app, change the channel, and use transport controls with their voice.

Get your Fire TV app ready

If you currently have apps or games on Fire TV, be sure to upgrade them to Fire OS 6 so that they are compatible with the new smart TVs. Notable changes from Fire OS 5 to Fire OS 6 include checking permissions at runtime and linking to private libraries. To learn more about upgrading to Fire OS 6, click here.

If you’ve never released an app or game for Fire TV, head over to Getting Started Developing Apps (Amazon Fire TV) for a quick intro. You’ll learn about development options (for example, native versus web apps), device and media specifications, and APIs that are available to you. You can also drag and drop your Android APK into our app testing tool to see if your app is already compatible for Fire TV with no additional coding required.

Click here to read the tech docs for the Toshiba 4K Ultra HD - Fire TV Edition.