Amazon continues to roll out upgrades for its Fire TV family of devices. Today, the Fire TV and Fire TV Stick got access to Sling TV, Dish Network’s new $20/month over-the-top TV streaming service.
That makes Amazon’s Fire TV family one of two living-room platforms that can stream from Sling TV at this point. (The service launched with support for Roku’s boxes, in addition to iOS, Android, Mac and PC.) The news comes just a couple days after Dish announced a partnership with AMC to bring content from its channels to people who subscribe to Sling TV.
Dish has made a splash with the new Sling TV service, appealing to cord-cutters by offering live TV, including ESPN and CNN. As part of the launch on Fire TV, people who sign up for three months of the Sling TV streaming service will get a free Fire TV Stick or $50 off a Fire TV box.
In addition to Sling TV, the Fire TV family has picked up some other high profile services, including a TED app and the Fox Sports Go app for video streaming. While it’s not known as a gaming console, the Fire TV also picked up some new titles in that arena, with versions of Telltale Games’s “Game of Thrones,” “Crossy Road,” “Luftrausers” and “OlliOlli.”
Overall, the Fire TV’s app selection is five times what it was at launch with the addition of all these new titles. Amazon has been beefing up the content for the devices in the face of competition from Apple, Google, Roku and others in the set-top box market.
