Nothing raises your cable bill faster than adding extra cable receivers to your home. You may notice that whenever you order a cable or satellite service the person on the other end always askes something along the lines of “and how many TVs will you be watching on. This is the cable equivalent of “would you like fries with that?
One way to get around this sort of thing is to use streaming apps designed to do the same thing as receivers and Amazon is putting itself in place to be a player in that market. That’s right despite the popularity of streaming devices amongst the cord-cutting crowd, there are millions of people who have a cable who also use streaming devices. Because even if you have cable it doesn’t mean you have an Amazon channel, Netflix or a Pandora Channel or any of the many streaming-only options.
This is why Amazon’s recent announcement of coming support for the Spectrum TV app and the recent addition of the Xfinity TV app are important. Comcast and Charter are the two largest cable companies in the country, so that means those two apps can serve a lot of customers. The Xfinity app had previously only been available on Roku devices as well as Samsung and LG TVs
Why get a streaming device instead of a cable receiver? Well, it’s because streaming devices are multifaceted. A cable or satellite receiver does one thing. It allows a user to watch the TV service on another TV. That’s it. While a Fire TV using a TV service streaming app can let a user watch TV as well as access a universe of other features. Want to fall asleep to rain sounds, just ask Alexa. Want to listen to the Beatles? Again just ask.
Amazon is not alone in this market but it is the most aggressive of late. Roku recently lost access to the Spectrum app on its devices. While existing customers will still have the channel new ones will not be able to access it. There is no reason to expect that things will not be worked out by the two parties. But by working out deals with the two giants in the industry Amazon does put itself in a position to offer more than the previous leader in streaming as Amazon recently announced that there are over 50 million activated Fire TV devices.
There are a number of smaller operators who offer similar streaming apps. If you have a Roku or Fire TV device search for your provider’s name in the respective app stores.
