Amazon is the first big company to add support for the Matter open casting standard, it announced at Matter Casting is an open protocol that lets you send videos and related content from an app to a hardware device, just like Apple AirPlay and Google Chromecast. The feature just launched for the Prime Video app and will allow casting to various Amazon hardware devices.
For now, you can only cast to the but the company says it’ll soon offer support for Fire TVs, including Panasonic models with Fire TV built in. As for content streaming partners, it’s just Prime Video for now, but the company promises more options later this year, including Plex, Pluto, Sling TV, Starz and many more.
This works just like AirPlay. You open the Prime Video App, tap the cast button and look for an appropriate hardware device. However, Matter cast isn’t tied to a particular smartphone operating system and is available to every app and hardware maker, if they want to implement the feature.
This is part of the open-source which is backed by Amazon, Apple and Google. However, it’s unlikely Google and Apple will jump onboard this particular feature set, as each company has its own casting standard in place. Google took to CES this week to announce that Chromecast will be giving no mention of Matter cast.
Amazon would prefer that each of the big tech companies adopt an open casting platform instead of the current glut of competing models. “We believe in open standards,” Chris DeCenzo, a principal engineer at Amazon, “It simplifies things for developers.”
In the meantime, major players have begun adopting other aspects of the Matter smart home standard. Google’s smart home devices and the same goes for
We’re reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.
