E-commerce company Amazon has released the Fire TV Stick, a streaming-media device that is inserted to a High-Definition Multimedia Interface on an HDTV and streams from various sources, including Hulu Plus, Netflix and Amazon's own Prime Instant Video.

Users will also find a wide range of other steaming apps, including A&E, Spotify and Vevo.

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The Fire TV Stick package has a free remote control and a complimentary 30-day trial of Netflix and Amazon Prime. The included remote control is not identical to the one that is free with the Fire TV, a streaming set-top box for televisions that was designed to offer both gaming and streaming entertainment, and includes voice search. Interested individuals that want the Fire TV Remote with the voice-search capability will need to dish out an additional $30.

The Fire TV Stick, however, already has a number of competitors in the market. One is the $35 Chromecast of Google, which also plugs into TVs using the same port and offers a large catalogue of streaming services. Chromecast users can also stream entertainment contend and their apps to the HDTV from an Android smartphone, tablet, Mac, iOS device, Windows PC, or Chromebook.

Another competitor is the Matchstick, a device that appeared earlier in the month on the fund-raising site Kickstarter, which easily surpassed its funding goal of $100,000. The device on Kickstarter sets itself apart from the competition by being the first streaming stick to be running on Firefox OS, Mozilla's open-source operating system.

Another device that the Fire TV Stick will have to compete with is Roku's $50 Streaming Stick.

Amazon said that the Fire TV Stick sports a dual-core processor, a gigabyte of random access memory and eight gigabytes of storage. The company claims its product has "50 percent more processor power and two times the memory of Chromecast, and six times the processing power...Roku Streaming Stick," which, Amazon argued, equates to better streaming performance.

The Fire TV Stick, which is currently available for preorder for $39, will be shipped by Amazon starting on Nov. 19.

TagsAmazon, Chromecast, Fire TV Stick, Amazon Fire TV Stick, Amazon Fire TV, Hulu Plus, netflix, Prime Instant Video, A&E, Spotify, vevo, Amazon Prome, Mac, Chromebook, streaming, Media streaming, Matchstick, Kickstarter, roku, Roku Streaming Stick, Streaming stick