The Fire TV home screen may look very different from cutters next month

Amazon Fire TV users will see a big change in their streaming players next month, as Amazon launches its biggest interface upgrade in more than four years.

The new Fire TV experience has been available on Amazon’s third generation Fire TV Stick and Fire TV Stick Lite since December, but Sandeep Gupta, Amazon’s VP and GM for Fire TV, said in an interview that more devices will update in March will start getting. . These include the Fire TV Stick 4K, the first and second generation Fire TV Cube, and the pendant-shaped Fire TV.

With the update, Amazon is trying to simplify its previously chaotic menu system with less redundant sections and easier ways to search for content. The new interface also adds support for the entire system user profile so that each family member can have their own personal home screen.

“It’s a big change in navigation model, discovery and everything, and we wanted to make sure customers get it, understand it and like where it’s going before we make it known to everyone,” Gupta said.

This is definitely an improvement over the previous interface, but as I found it myself, it also preserves some of the old frustrations of the Fire TV.

See what’s streaming

With the new interface, Amazon has tried to curb the expansion that makes Fire TV devices difficult to navigate. While Fire TVs used to have separate menus for free content, movies, TV shows, and programs, the new interface consolidates all the sections into one menu called “Find.”

Jared Newman / IDG

It leaves only four main areas for navigation, including the home section, the library for video purchases and watch list items, a live section for linear video streams, and Find.

At the same time, Amazon has found more places where recommendations can be plugged. Your six favorite apps now sit right next to Fire TV’s top menus, and they can each suggest movies and shows to watch as you browse through them. The above Find menu also has new categories like genre like Drama, Westerns and Comedy Movies.

Jared Newman / IDG

Because of all these changes, users who have already received the update are twice as likely to venture outside the main screen and to other parts of the interface, Gupta said.

‘Honestly, a lot of [the old interface] ‘did not work for them, and it became obsolete and repetitive, and they could not discover and find new content,’ he said. “This is where we spent a lot of time improving the experience.”

Room for improvement

This is not to say that the new interface is a total triumph.

Like some of its competitors (especially Google and its new Chromecast), Amazon is trying to solve the problem of having too many streaming apps to sort through. In addition, Fire TV’s content recommendations come from many different sources, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Disney +, and CBS All Access.

But because Amazon does not always specify where a recommendation comes from before you click on it, you can not easily see if the choice requires another subscription or rent. Unlike on the aforementioned Chromecast or the TiVo Stream 4K, there is no way to limit the Fire TV home screen to just the content you are already paying for.

Jared Newman / IDG

Gupta said the home screen is so structured by design, as Amazon wants people to discover things on new services. Still, he says Amazon is working on ways to make the recommendations more relevant. For example, the company has just launched a “Dynamic Row” feature that arranges your home screen according to your viewing habits.

“If there is a recommendation that is not relevant, it feels like an advertisement, while relevant recommendations are a useful discovery mechanism,” he said.

Technically, there is one way to filter out the content that costs extra: in the Movies and TV Shows section of the Find menu, you can filter ‘Free to Me’ filters that contain only the content of your subscriptions or ad-supported programs show. And if you browse by genre, you usually see a series of recommendations from your subscription services.

Jared Newman / IDG

But even these characteristics are imperfect. I noticed that they weighed heavily in the direction of Netflix and Amazon Prime, excluding other services I subscribed to, including Disney +, CBS All Access, and Apple TV +.

Towards a better stream guide

These issues speak of a bigger problem with Fire TV in general, one that is not at all unique to the new interface: it can still feel more like a marketing exercise than serving users.

On the home screen, there are still banner ads and sponsored content rows, which you have to browse to further reach the recommendations, and content from Amazon Prime and Amazon’s ad-supported IMDb TV service seems to be getting more promotion than anything else. While other streaming platforms like Roku and Google TV have their own ads and promotions, Amazon’s approach feels more aggressive.

Jared Newman / IDG

But maybe that will change as streaming services start to play for better placement. At some point, the amount of Prime content on the Fire TV home screen feels like a hold on most other shows’ interest in this kind of aggregation. Traditionally, services like Netflix have been more focused on attracting people into their own programs than advertising content outside of them.

Gupta said that these services will eventually come. He noted that Hulu + Live TV saw a 50 percent increase in traffic when he added channels to the “Live” section of Fire TV, saying that streaming services are starting to see directories as a necessity for engagement . With any luck, the Fire TV experience will become more balanced as streaming providers insist on showing their content.

‘You’re seeing more and more streaming services, more and more apps coming out, so where are people going to discover and find new content? This is where we spend a lot of time improving the experience, ”Gupta said.

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