Now, Amazon Fire TV offers 'Live TV' with Alexa integration
What's the story
In a bid to upgrade the streaming experience of its customers, Amazon has launched a new 'Live TV' feature for Fire TV devices in India. The capability, as the company explains, will make it easier for Fire TV users to directly browse live TV channels from different OTT content providers, without having to launch each app separately to search for individual channels. Here's more.
Working
How the Live TV system would work?
With the new feature, a new 'Live' tab will appear on the navigation pane of Fire TV - next to movies and shows. Once you move to this section, the platform will show OTT services offering live channels as well as dedicated icons for those channels. From there, you can easily log into the content provider's app and browser their channels seamlessly.
Integrated
Four integrated services, dozens of popular channels
As of now, the Live tab supports four streaming services - Voot, SonyLIV, nexGTv, and Discovery+. This alone gives access to dozens of popular TV channels, including Sony SAB HD, Sony Pix HD, Colors HD, News18, SET HD, Nick HD+, Dangal, DD National, News18 India, MTV Beats HD, Sony BBC Earth HD, Mastii TV Music, TLC, Animal Planet, and Discovery.
Other apps
ZEE5 is also on the way
Additionally, Amazon has also said that ZEE5 will be integrated with the Live experience, bringing access to popular ZEE-branded channels like ZEE Cinema, ZEE TV, and ZEE News. However, at this time, it is not clear if Hotstar will also be linked to this experience, which is the provider for several Star-branded channels in India (and a direct competition to Amazon's Prime service).
Added benefits
Channel guide and Alexa integration also included
On the Live tab, Amazon says, users can also access a dedicated channel guide to see ongoing and upcoming programs on different channels. And, if you do not want to do any hard work, there will be the option to launch channels using Alexa; you may simply say "Alexa, Watch Colors HD" and start watching whatever is live on Colors HD.
On Now
'On Now' will show programs on the home screen
Notably, as part of the new experience, Amazon is also adding an 'On Now' row on the home screen of Fire TV. Here, you will be able to find programs that are currently playing across the channels of the OTT services you have subscribed to and downloaded on the Fire TV stick. It will also show a red bar indicating the shows' progress.
Roll-out
Roll-out in the coming weeks
The roll-out of the 'Live' tab has begun for existing Fire TV and Fire TV Edition customers and will be available over the next few weeks. For new customers, the tab will be available within a few weeks after the device is activated. Meanwhile, 'On Now' will be available to customers based on the OTT apps they have downloaded and are subscribed to.