David Farnor | On 27, Feb 2018

Amazon Fire TV has become the first device to support far-field voice control, using Amazon’s Alexa to allow users to interact with their streaming device.

By pairing Fire TV with any Amazon Echo device, users can now ask Alexa to play movies, launch apps, control playback, or show live video from compatible smart home cameras – all hands-free.

Getting started is easy: if you have only one Fire TV, your Echo device will automatically pair as soon as you ask Alexa a question that includes Fire TV, such as “Alexa, watch The Tick on Fire TV.” If you have more than one Fire TV, use the Alexa App to pair your devices. You can ask Alexa to search by title, actor or genre, control video playback and launch apps, as well as start apps or popular content available on Fire TV such as Amazon Video, Netflix, UKTV and more. Customers can also view live video feeds via Alexa from a supported smart home camera right from their Fire TV.

Here are some of the things you can say to control your Fire TV hands-free: “Alexa, watch Bad Moms”, “Alexa, pause”, “Alexa, fast forward 2 minutes”, “Alexa, go back 1 minute”, “Alexa, show me dramas with Titus Welliver”, “Alexa, go home”, “Alexa, open Netflix”, “Alexa, open UKTV on Fire TV”, “Alexa, show my front door camera”.

Far-field control of Fire TV is available in the UK on all generations of Fire TV and Fire TV Stick and can pair with any Echo device.

Far-field control is the latest new feature added for Alexa, following other features such as lyric search for music, music alarms, reminders, named timers, local search and movie show times, multi-room music, short term memory, and more.

“Alexa is always learning,” says Amazon in a statement. “This is the first iteration of far-field voice control, and we look forward to hearing customer feedback to continue to evolve the service over time.”

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