Amazon's Fire TV experience isn't perfect, and one of the more annoying aspects has been how Amazon organizes its free content. The compan has experimented with free live and on-demand content in Fire TV for a few months, but there wasn't one central location for everything, like the Roku Channel on Roku devices. That's now changing with the launch of Fire TV Channels.
The new Fire TV Channels app can be thought of as a pathway to free content from Amazon, whether that's live content or on-demand movies, shows, and clips. You can watch news, sports, and get access to entertainment, cooking, travel, and gaming content, among lots of other stuff. Content providers you can find include ABC News, CBS News, and CNBC for news, as well as Fox Sports and CBS Sports HQ for sports, as well as dedicated MLB and NHL channels. The point of this is to make a range of content that's free to watch with your Fire TV, and it can be seen as a sort of competitor to the Roku Channel — this one has the advantage of being multi-platform, though, which Amazon's implementation doesn't seem to have at the moment. That might change in the future.
Fire TV Channels were first introduced back in May, but now it's organized into one place. Of course, we remain to see how much content can actually be watched through this new platform. Although Amazon is promising that over 400 content providers are available on this platform, we wouldn't expect to see things such as live soccer games or anything of the like, at least not without a heavy dose of ads. You might get to see sports highlights as well as live news.
Amazon says that the app is currently available on Amazon Fire TV devices. It might be a few weeks before it actually rolls out to everyone, and you might want to update your streaming device or TV's system while you're at it. If you're looking for more free stuff to watch, Pluto TV is another option, though it will likely have some overlap with Amazon's service — most of these "FAST" platforms license much of the same content.
Source: Amazon