Amazon has revamped its Fire TV with a new user interface and refreshed mobile app designed for faster and more streamlined discovery of content.
The redesigned user interface will allow Fire TV users to find movies, TV shows, sports, news and live content across all of their subscriptions up to 20% to 30% faster. Additionally, the redesign will allow users to increase the number of apps pinned to their home screen from six to 20.
Fire TV users will also be able to get to games, art & photos and the Ambient Experience faster through the menu button their remote and will have a new shortcut to audio and display settings, connected Ring cameras and smart home device management.
On the mobile app, Fire TV users will have the ability to browse content, manage their watchlist and play titles on their TV with a similar look and feel to the new user interface.
They can also use their phone as a second screen to discover what to watch next or add a friend’s show recommendation to their watchlist when they’re away from home.
The Fire TV user interface improvements will be available to customers with a free software update. The Fire TV mobile app will be available for free download.
The move comes after Amazon launched Alexa+ on Fire TVs last year, which can add titles to watchlists, get stats from games, create an AI-generated background screensaver, pull up photos and turn down the lights.
In December, the company revealed that Alexa+ would also offer personalized recommendations and let you jump to specific scenes in movies through a new generative AI-powered feature.
“Our mission at Fire TV is getting customers to what they want to watch—fast. We know that can be hard with so much content to choose from. It would take 100 years just to stream the free content on Fire TV,” the company wrote in a blog post. “As customers are talking to Alexa+ more than 2.5 times more often than they were with the original Alexa, we knew it was time to upgrade other key parts of the Fire TV experience.”
In addition to the redesign, the tech giant has launched its new Amazon Ember Artline, a 4K QLED TV featuring support for Dolby Vision, HDR10+, Wi-Fi 6, and a thin 1.5-inch design.
It has a matte screen designed to make art and photos look great and to reduce glare in any lighting condition. It also has far-field microphones to chat with Alexa+, Omnisense technology that automatically turns the Ambient Experience on and off when people enter or leave the room, and a seamless integration with Amazon Photos, more than 2,000 pieces of free art, and the new Fire TV user interface.
Additionally, it has an AI-powered feature that lets users take up to four photos of the room where they plan to hang the Amazon Ember Artline and quickly get personalized recommendations on the best works of art to show on-screen that match a user’s style and décor.
Alexa+ will also help create slideshows of your photos by saying things like, “Alexa, create a slideshow of our family trip to Colorado” or “Alexa, show photos from our wedding.” And users can pick one of 10 easily adjustable, magnetic frames in colors including Walnut, Ash, Teak, Black Oak, Matte White, Midnight Blue, Fig, Pale Gold, Graphite, and Silver.
The new Fire TV UI and mobile app will launch in February on the Fire TV Stick 4K Plus, Fire TV Stick 4K Max 2nd Generation and Fire TV Omni Mini-LED Series in the U.S.
Later this spring, the new UI design will expand to more countries and more devices, including the latest generation Fire TV 4K streaming media players and TVs like the Fire TV 2-Series, Fire TV 4-Series, Fire TV Omni QLED Series; TVs made from partners like Hisense, Insignia, Panasonic, and TCL; and at launch on the Amazon Ember Artline, which will go on sale later this spring in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and the UK. The Amazon Ember Artline will be available from 55” to 65” with prices starting at $899.
Customers have purchased over 300 million Fire TV devices, including Amazon’s streaming media players, TVs made by partners like Hisense, Panasonic, TCL, and Xiaomi and Amazon TVs like the latest Fire TV 2-Series, 4-Series and Omni QLED Series.
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