Kindle Unlimited looks a lot like Netflix for ebooks

Read a lot of ebooks? Amazon customers may soon have access to more than 600,000 titles for a monthly subscription fee, a deal that could be right up your alley.

GigaOM reported that Amazon may be planning to become the Netflix of ebooks as revealed by mistakenly leaked product pages advertising a new subscription service called Kindle Unlimited.

The pages in question were first spotted by publishers and readers on the Kindle Boards early Wednesday, although most of that evidence vanished from Amazon's website as quickly as it first appeared.

Thankfully, Google has come to the rescue, allowing those cached pages to be called up from the great beyond for further scrutiny ahead of Amazon officially launching the all-you-can-eat ebook subscription service.

Freedom to explore

One such screenshot touts "unlimited access to over 600,000 titles and thousands of audiobooks on any device for just $9.99 a month," which sounds a lot like what competing ebook subscription services Scribd and Oyster already offer. The price in straight conversions comes out to about £6 and AU$11.

For the moment, available Kindle Unlimited content appears to be flush with titles already available through the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, which allows Amazon Prime subscribers who also own one of the company's tablets to "borrow" one ebook free each month.

Conspicuously absent from the test pages, however, are major publishers like Simon & Schuster or HarperCollins, both of whom already offer titles to Amazon's subscription-based competitors.

One web page entitled "KU Test," which is still live at the time of this writing, displays a total of 638,416 available ebook titles, plus another 7,351 Whispersync for Voice-enabled audiobooks, which could offer Amazon a competitive edge over rivals.

• Check out our review of Amazon's Fire TV while you're here!

Nvidia's Shield follow-up may be a serious Steam Machine rival

Nvidia is preparing to launch a new gaming device.

According to the BBC, that device will be an Nvidia Shield follow-up with a different form factor - and it might focus on the living room.

Like the Shield, this new Nvidia device will be able to stream Windows games from a PC (one with a newer Nvidia GPU that can support the Nvidia GeForce Experience, at least) and play PGEgaHJlZj0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy5ob3N0aW5na2l0YS5jb20NIiB0YXJnZXQ9Il9ibGFuayIgcmVsPSJub2ZvbGxvdyI+QW5kcm9pZCA8L2E+games natively.

But unlike the narrow-marketed Shield, this gadget may focus more on rivaling the upcoming wave of Steam Machines, with a controller sold separately rather than built-in.

Form confusion

The new device is said to have an HDMI outport, though, granted, the original Shield did as well.

At this point, only the BBC knows exactly what form the new Nvidia gaming device might ultimately take.

The report never comes out and says it, but it seems the gadget in question might be one and the same with the rumored Nvidia Shield tablet that keeps popping up.

For one thing the BBC says it the device can "also stream PC games" to a television screen via thanks to the outport, implying it has its own screen. What's more, the report also says that Nvidia may intend the Shield follow-up to serve as an example for other companies making smartphones and tablets.

Tegra K1 in the house

Naturally this mysterious Nvidia gaming device is also said to be packing the company's flagship Tegra K1 chip, another similarity it has with the rumored Shield tablet.

A Nvidia spokesperson declined to confirm with the BBC exactly what the company is working on, but did share that Nvidia has an "awesome new gaming product that is launching soon."

With at least some Steam Machines delayed until 2015, Nvidia might be able to get a head start with whatever this new gaming device turns out to be.

For now, unfortunately, all the rest of us can do is sit back and watch the living room PC wars continue to play out.

• What makes Steam Machines tick? Why SteamOS, of course