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This will be a home run. All the current players are pretty awful. They have channels but no programming. Apple has a very closed/iTunes box, Roku has no content, and Microsoft charges a monthly fee to OTT. Samsung has done the best job of bringing content to OTT and even the people who own the devices don't know they are doing it.
If you take away Vudu, Crackle, Netflix, Prime, and Hulu, what are people looking at? Cover those, and you just have to produce good enough content to beat Angry Birds. If this thing is a headless fire, then it should have access to all the games and apps in the Amazon app store.
Why would Amazon do this? Remember when we used to talk about interactive TV? Clicking on a commercial to learn more about a product or purchase it? Amazon loves Special Offers. There will be a lot of marketing data to be collected and sold. Amazon can host content to creators.
What can Amazon bring? For starters, they can negotiate a programing package similar to Samsung's. Amazon is big enough to negotiate good prices for content and smart enough to create compelling bundles (free shipping+movies and tv+lending library). Tight integration with Fire devices should mean remote control, fling, and scheduling (DVR) apps.
I'd love to see an RF-in and full integration of OTA (including TVGos).
I can see me sitting in front of my 60" 1080p Plasma (which was a Special Offer) browsing Prime and TVGos then flinging a YouTube video from my Fire to the box.
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