Amazons Fire TV soundbars will get Dolby Atmos, HDMI switching, and more later this year

Putting your smart TV OS on a soundbar instead of on a box, stick, or in your TV itself has gone from a small curiosity to a certified trend in the past few months. Amazon’s efforts started with the Anker Nebula soundbar back in September, and this year at CES, Amazon is announcing a couple more from TCL. More importantly, it’s planning on beefing up future Fire TV soundbars into proper media switchers.

Later this year, soundbars with Fire TV will gain support for Dolby Atmos, HDMI switching, far-field microphones for Alexa, and “device control” (which is presumably code for IR blasters like what’s available with the Fire TV Cube now). It’s a bigger deal than the list of new features implies because many consumers find it most convenient...

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