Amazon begins rolling out Smart Home Dashboard and other new features to Fire TV

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Amazon is starting today to roll out new features and capabilities to its range of Fire TV streaming devices and the recently released Fire TV Omni and 4-Series TVs. Topping the pile of new tricks is a Smart Home Dashboard that looks similar to what’s already available on the company’s Fire tablets and Echo Show smart displays.

The dashboard, available in the US and Canada, offers quick access and on / off switches for connected lights, plugs, and switches that are linked to your Alexa system. Smart cameras get their own row in the dashboard, complete with a thumbnail of their perspective, albeit not a live view until you actually click them. Previously, you could control your smart home gadgets with voice commands via the Fire TV’s Alexa voice remote, but it’s always nice to have a real on-screen interface for these things. Samsung offers a TV dashboard for its SmartThings platform, and Apple TV has a semblance of it via Control Center. Amazon says additional features like smart home groups and smart thermostats will be added to the dashboard next year.

Speaking of Alexa, Amazon also adds what it calls an Alexa link panel that appears on the screen when you press the remote’s Alexa button. This will take you to “smart home controls, weather, news and your video library”. The company says this feature will be “widely” implemented on Fire TV hardware in the US.

Amazon is also upping the audio side of its Fire TV experience. The company is expanding the ability to use Echo speakers (like the Echo Studio if you’re feeling fancy) as speakers and bringing that functionality to the new Fire TV Stick 4K Max and Fire TV Omni / 4-Series.

On TVs, Alexa Home Theater supports audio from both streaming apps and connected devices, but Amazon says the same goes for the Stick 4K Max as well as long as it’s plugged into the TV’s eARC port. Sound from other inputs such as a game console will be routed through Alexa’s home theater setup. This is a first and something other Fire TV streamers are unable to:

With Omni Series and 4 Series Fire TVs, audio will play when streaming to the Fire TV and any compatible connected device, including cable boxes, game consoles, and antenna sources. The Fire TV Stick 4K Max can now do the same, as long as it’s plugged into your TV’s HDMI eARC port, which means you can stream audio to the Echo speakers, even when you’re enjoying content on inputs other than the Fire TV. Setup instructions are here.

After promising to support Apple’s AirPlay 2 on its Fire TV Omni and Series 4 TVs, this feature will also be available soon, although sadly AirPlay integration is still nowhere to be found on standalone Fire TV streaming devices. Finally, Amazon once again confirms that Zoom is coming to Omni TVs.

Owners of the first self-branded Amazon TVs will be able to connect a camera to the USB port for video conferencing. In the coming weeks, you will be able to host and receive Zoom meetings from the largest screen in your home. After downloading the Zoom app via Fire TV, simply plug a compatible 720p-1080p webcam into the USB port and say “Alexa, find Zoom” to set up.

Fire TV owners can expect all of these new features to arrive in the “next few weeks,” according to Amazon.

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