Both HP and Microsoft could very well have set the world on fire earlier this year, after they together launched the HP Stream 13, and yet still that reduced price is being overshadowed by an early Black Friday 2014 from Microsoft. Opening on Monday, the price tag was just $199 when customers purchase it through the Microsoft Store retail website.

Microsoft included the laptop to its Black Friday 2014 deals and at this moment their Black Friday 2014 deals page presents three active  offers: the HP Stream 13 for $199,  as well as the HP Stream 7 for $99, and the Beats Powerbeats 2 Wireless In-Ear Headphones  for $179.99 which seems to be out of stock already.

The hardware sports a 13-inch hi-def screen, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. The inside is running on a basic Intel Celeron processor. There’s a front-facing 720p cam web camera for online video communicating in the HP Stream 13’s notebook body. The body is available in light-blue, which includes a white keyboard.

The 13.3-inch display size is to be just more than suitable for the laptop, and the battery comes with a remarkable 7.5 hours on a charge, according to HP.

Keep in mind that this is not designed for powerhouse computing, but rather the basics: email, the Web, Netflix and home-level efficiency, the Stream contains a one-year membership to Microsoft Office365 Personal.
Ordinarily, 12 months membership would cost $69.99 and features Outlook, OneNote, Excel and Microsoft Word. After that initial year users will require to re-new the subscription at the regular price.
Users may likewise break that down into monthly $6.99 payments. There doesn’t seem to be any other agreements or some other conditions.

Besides the price cut, the laptop arrives together with Windows 8.1 and of course Bing pre-installed. That may be a long way of saying that Microsoft is putting in a key bonus.

Windows 8.1 features an app shop for getting your fix of music, apps, videos and games, and Microsoft is providing HP Stream 13 buyers a $25 in shop credit to use.

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A new streaming stick is said to be coming from Walmart, but it appears that it will be supporting just the one service – Vudu. The stick set to be called the Vudu Spark, and on first impressions it seems a little limited compared to rival sticks like Chromecast, the Roku Stick and the Fire TV Stick.

Vudu is the pay-to-view rental and purchase streaming service owned by retail giant Walmart, so the spark device sounds like a good way for it’s customers to get some streaming action easily on any TV.

The news, specs and user manual have all been revealed by the FCC database (although since removed), and Walmart have also confirmed it’s existence. A Vudu rep is quoted as saying, “At VUDU, we’re always looking at new ways for our customers to experience the movies and TV show in their VUDU library. We’re developing a streaming stick and will share more information in the coming months, so stay tuned.”

The stick will work as others do by connecting to a users WiFi service and this one comes with a remote control, but it seems that the ‘mirroring’ or ‘cast’ functions of other sticks will be missing leaving users with just the Vudu streaming service.

Now the Vudu a’la carte service may be pretty good allowing viewers to rent or buy content, but it does already have Chromecast compatibility with the iOS and Android apps. Streaming fans will quite rightly expect a bit more choice from any device purchased, so the Vudu Spark may lose a bit of it’s sparkle when it hits the stores for a price and date yet to be announced.

Google already have a large slice of the streaming hardware market with the phenomenally successful Chromecast stick. And now they are after some more, having announced a new set-top box that will take care of streaming as well as playing games.

The new Nexus Player running on the Android TV platform is a little unusual, as it is round rather than the standard square shape that these boxes tend to be. It is small (around 4.5 inches) comes with 8GB ram, and has a remote that allows both physical and voice control just likethe Amazon Fire STB.

The Android TV OS was revealed to the world back in June, and is designed to allow easy access to stream music, movies, and TV shows as well as play Android games.

The Nexus Player which is made for Google by Asus, also supports a game controller, which is available separately. And it will mimic the functions of the Chromecast stick, supporting the “Cast” feature that lets users stream videos from Android, iOS or Chrome OS to the TV.

The box will give users access to streaming movies and TV shows from services such as Netflix, Hulu Plus, Google Play, YouTube amongst others, as well  as music and videogames.

The Nexus Player will sell for for $99, and an additional $39 for the game controller, and can be pre-ordered from the Google Play Store on Friday (October 17).

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Another Chromecast rival has popped up, that promises to do what every other streaming stick does, that is mirror content from your PC or mobile device as well as stream from dedicated apps to your TV.

Called the Matchstick and set to retail at $25, a lower price than the Google rival, the stick runs on the Mozilla open source Firefox OS. The HDMI stick plugs into the back of any television set and connects to the local WiFi network and then your ready to ‘Fling’. Flinging is Matchstick’s term for Mirroring or casting, and will mirror any content from a connected device to the TV set.

The Matchstick is being funded via a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign, which has already smashed the $100,000 target and currently sits close to double that amount, and early investors can pick up a Matchstick for a mere $12. Amazingly the streaming stick took just one day to surpass its goal and it still has 28 days to run before the campaign is complete.

The makers say that many apps will be available in a MatchStick app store at launch that include Netflix, HBO Go and Pandora, and porting apps from the Chromecast can be completed in less than an hour. The stick is expected to launch initial stock in February 2015.

They might not quite have theh Apple ‘cool factor’, or compete with Google and Amazon’s marketing muscle, but the Roku streaming players have still managed to pass the 10 million sales mark in the US, since launching in 2008.

The news comes from Roku CEO Anthony Wood, who writing in a blog post today said that since launching in 2008, they have sold 10 million streaming set-top boxes in the United States.

Although the figure is impressive it still looks a little tame compared to Apple’s sales of 20 million units for the Apple TV, revealed back in April.

But the Roku users are engaging more with their box say the company. Quoting an NPD survey, Roku say that users of it’s devices are streaming double what other users are with 37 million hours weekly compared to 15 million hours for Apple TV owners, 12 million for Chromecast, and just 6 million hours for Amazon Fire TV.

And their sales figures are mightily impressive with little marketing compared to big hitting rivals such as Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast. The future is looking bright for Roku with both the launch of their streaming stick, and a deal in place to integrate it’s platform in Hisense and TCL TV sets.