Fire TV owners are soon going to be able to used Fire their sticks, cubes, and TVs as cable boxes. Amazon has come to an agreement with Charter Spectrum to offer the Spectrum TV app. This announcement comes just days after the app was pulled from the Roku platform.
The Spectrum app is rather unique in the industry as it allows users to access the full suite of Spectrum’s TV services. It allows users to watch any channel that they pay for in a program guide and uses an interface identical to the one the official cable boxes do. But to prevent password sharing the app is set up so that it only works at a home where the Spectrum cable box and modem are set up.
This means that anybody who has Spectrum cable can add their cable service to any television for a one-time fee that adds thousands of apps to the set instead of paying monthly box fees, which add up very quickly for people with multiple extra receivers.
The app also serves as a staging ground for direct to streaming services that Spectrum offers such as Spectrum TV Choice. Customers who sign up for Spectrum TV Choice choose 10 cable channels and get access to all of their local TV channels directly through the app. It’s the closest thing I have seen to a la carte cable yet.
