Amazon takes on Apple’s AirPlay 2 with official adoption of new open Matter Casting standard

As part of its CES 2024 reveals, Amazon has now announced official support for Matter Casting on Fire TV and Echo Show 15 devices. Amazon is a “founding member and key contributor” to Matter – a growing smart home standard that presents a more unified control experience across multiple major smart home platforms – and it is the first to add support for the new Matter Casting feature. At CES, Amazon is announcing support for the new casting feature on its Prime Video app, enabling customers to “cast content to Fire TV and Echo Show 15 devices directly from supported streaming apps” on both iOS and Android. The details are below. 

Matter Casting comes to Echo Show 15, Fire TV, more

Matter Casting effectively gives users another way to beam content across various apps and devices that support it. While the new Matter feature is still in its infancy in some ways, it is now getting a big boost with Amazon officially adopting it across its Echo Show 15 and, soon, on other Fire TV devices. 

Customers can begin watching a movie or browse for their next favorite show from Prime Video on their phone, and cast it to their compatible Fire TV device or Echo Show 15. This is an industry-first demonstration of implementing Matter Casting.

Matter Casting is a feature that requires software on both ends of the transmission to offer support for it, much like Apple’s AirPlay feature and Google Chromecast, but is an open standard available to any manufacturer. 

Amazon is offering Matter Casting “right now for customers around the world who want to cast Prime Video content from iOS and Android devices to Echo Show 15.” The feature will be available on compatible Fire TV devices in the coming months, including smart Panasonic TVs using the Fire TV platform, and Amazon says it is currently working with other streaming platforms and apps to implement Matter Casting later this year (Plex, Pluto TV, Sling TV, STARZ, and ZDF)

Here’s what Alison Hoffman, the STARZ President of Domestic Networks, had to say about the upcoming integration:

We are excited to work with Amazon to bring Matter Casting to the STARZ app. Matter has been easy to integrate and will provide even more options for customers to enjoy our extensive collection of original series and popular films on their device of choice.”