Amazon launches web browser for Fire TV

You’ll never convince me that using an internet browser on a television set is anything but awkward and bad, but if for whatever reason you’ve been waiting to browse the web on Amazon’s Fire TV devices, the company has answered that call. The Amazon Silk browser, which already comes on Fire tablets, is now available for Amazon Fire TV set-top boxes, sticks, and Fire TV Edition HDTVs. You can download it from the app store on supported devices.

For now, as noted by AFTVnews, support is limited to first- and second-gen Fire TV boxes and the second-gen Stick — plus the Westinghouse/Element 4K TV that runs Amazon’s Fire TV software as its operating system. The most recent Fire TV released this fall can’t yet run the Silk browser; Amazon says an update due in December will fix that.

Follow that AFTVnews link for a walkthrough of Silk’s capabilities if you want an idea of what it can and can’t do. The in-browser video experience is apparently pretty good, so jumping into Silk could be another way of streaming content that’s not readily available elsewhere in Amazon’s ecosystem of apps and services. Even so, with my Xbox One, I think I can count the number of times I’ve opened Microsoft Edge — intentionally, anyway — on a single hand.

AFTVnews