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 two TVs, Fire TV Edition - Toshiba 4K (2018) and Fire TV Edition - Toshiba HD (2018), will be available for pre-order in Canada, exclusively at Best Buy retail locations and online at BestBuy.com.

Combining true-to-life picture quality with the Fire TV experience built in, the smart TVs seamlessly integrate your favorite content on the home screen, including live over-the-air TV broadcasts, and streaming apps and channels. The Fire TV Edition - Toshiba 4K (2018) supports up to 4K resolutions at 60 fps and HDR10, and is available in 43”, 50”, and 55” sizes. The Fire TV Edition - Toshiba HD (2018) provides high-quality 2K streaming and is available in 32”, 43”, and 49” sizes.

For developers, these two new smart TVs add yet another way to reach potential customers, expanding your audience to Canadian customers. You also have the option to publish your media streaming app with French Canadian support, creating a better experience for your French Canadian users.

Bring your apps to life with voice control

With the included Alexa Voice Remote, your customers can use speech to interact with their living room environment. Want to create a voice-forward experience for your customers? Here are two options to enable voice control in your apps:

1. Integrate your English and/or French Canadian media catalog with Amazon Fire TV so your content can be included in universal browse and search results. And, regardless of where users find your content in the Fire TV interface, they can play it directly without needing to open your app first. Click here to learn more.
2. 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 and click here to view the Media Session tech docs.

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.