Amazon adds AirPlay 2 and HomeKit to two Fire TV Edition TVs for Free

Amazon announced on Wednesday that it is adding support for AirPlay 2 and HomeKit to two of its Fire TV Edition televisions in a free update. Both the Toshiba 4K UHD Smart Fire TV with Dolby Vision 2020 and the Insignia 4K UHD Smart TV 2020 will receive the features before they reach Amazon's less expensive Fire TV set-top boxes and sticks.

On these specific TVs, AirPlay 2 should work the same way on Apple's own Apple TV, allowing users to send audio and video from their phone, tablet, or computer to the big screen and control playback from your device. Integrating with HomeKit, Apple's smart home ecosystem needs a bit more groundwork: users will have to enable HomeKit in their TV settings under Display and sounds> AirPlay and HomeKit> Configure, and then add it as a device on the Home app. Once added, they can use Siri to turn your Fire TV on and off, change the volume, or change the inputs.

Both AirPlay 2 and HomeKit coming to Fire TVs (hopefully soon, Fire TV sticks) should make it easier to use TVs with Apple devices. Apple already has a stake in Amazon devices - the Apple TV Plus app hit Fire TVs in 2019.

It's a stark contrast to the way these two companies interacted just over five years back. Earlier, Amazon had banned sales of competing hardware like Apple TV (and Chromecast and Nexus Player) in its market because it claimed that it was important to only sell media players that "interact well" with Prime Video. Since then, the companies have reconciled and reached a very favourable agreement for Amazon that allows it to avoid the 30 percent commission from Apple's App Store and use its own in-app purchasing system. Now things are better. At least if you have an iPhone and a Fire TV.