Amazon is giving its Prime Video app a full redesign. A newly overhauled app is starting to roll out now to Fire TV devices, as well as other streaming platforms like Roku, Apple TV, Android TV, and game consoles. The new design closely resembles other streaming apps, such as Netflix, with the navigation menu changed from being a horizontal menu across the top, so a slim vertical menu across the left side.
The new navigation menu consists of Find, Home, Store, Live TV, Free with ads, and My Stuff. Dropped are the dedicated navigation items for Channels and Categories, which were in the old app’s navigation menu. Those areas seem to still exist, but are just not front and center in the navigation menu anymore. The Home screen is divided into sub-sections for All, Movies, TV Shows, and Sports. Those are accessed through a smaller horizontal navigation menu on the Home screen itself, just below the large carousel banner at the top.
Another aspect of the new app that will seem very familiar to Netflix users is what Amazon calls “super carousels,” which are lists of content that use larger portrait-oriented artwork. This poster-style artwork expands into a landscape video preview of the content when you hover over a selection.
With a new “Live TV” item in the navigation menu, there’s more of a focus on live content and sports in the new Prime Video app than in the previous version. The Live TV section pulls up a grid-based channel guide, similar to the one built into the Fire TV itself, but with a more attractive design aesthetic. This section of the app is a bit redundant for those using it on Fire TVs that have the Live tab, but seeing how this app redesign is meant for non-Fire TV devices as well, it makes sense that a guide was included.
The new Prime Video app is supposed to be rolling out now, but I don’t have it yet on any of my Fire TV devices. It’s probably safe to assume that some older models, of both Fire TVs and other streaming devices, won’t get the new app and will stick with the existing one, but I don’t know the list of devices that will and won’t get the new app.
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Prime video is so integrated into the main FTV gui, I honestly almost never use the actual app.
Same here. Although there are times that some Prime Video Channel subscription content doesn’t show up or present properly in the Fire TV UI and jumping into the Prime Video app uncovers content and presents it correctly.
Right. We rarely ever every use the actual Prime Video app on our FireTv Stick. Who does? We only use it to access our purchased video content. It’s really confusing.
Elias,
Engage article listed a few devices that are likely not getting the updated UI.
ENGADGET:
The new experience won’t roll out to every device where Prime Video is available, and among the more notable omissions are the third-generation Apple TV and Sony’s PlayStation 3. If either of those are how you watch Prime Video, you won’t lose access to the service as a result — you’ll just have to get by without the redesigned interface for the time being.
Is this coming also to Fire tv Sticks and Cubes?
Haven’t seen it hit my cube2.
Will the change reflect the look of the Fire TV system? Looking forward to a change.
It appears that they are attempting to make the Prime Video app look and navigate more like the Fire TV UI. All the reports are a bit vague on if this is a PRIME VIDEO app update only, or if some of this will make it into the Fire TV UI.
This does not appear to be live yet on Nvidia Shield TV 2019 at this time.
Nothing on the Prime Video app on Roku or Fire TV devices yet either. I think Amazon pushed out a PR tease of this early in the week to step on Netflix’s earnings announcement.
Got this today on my Shield.
Didn’t get a chance to take it for a spin, but it looks pretty nice.
If there’s one thing I like less than a poor user interface,
it’s an interface that keeps on changing.
Prime Video app UI has been pretty stagnant for quite some time.
I have it on my Gen2 cube, but honestly don’t find it any more or less useful than before. like others have said, probably adds functionality with Amazon Channels but I buy my subscriptions direct after seeing the convenience charges from Amazon