Amazon Fire TV devices may show fullscreen video ads now when started. These advertise Amazon Prime Video content. Good news is that users may turn these off on their devices.
The trailers play before users have had any interaction with the device, apart from turning it on. Amazon introduced the change on all current Fire TV devices, including Fire TV Cube and Stick devices.
Fire TV customers are not informed about the change by Amazon. The company provided Android Authority with a statement though in which it highlighted the awesomeness of the feature.
In short, Amazon sees it as a new way for customers to “discover something great to watch”. And it is super easy to go back to Home according to Amazon. All it takes is to press the Back or Home button on the Fire TV remote to do so.
Fire TV users may turn off this new experience.
Turn off fullscreen Ads on Fire TV devices
Amazon integrated functionality to turn off video autoplay in the player’s main settings. Here is how that is done:
- Select the Settings button on the Homescreen of the device.
- Activate Preferences to open all device preferences.
- Locate and select Featured Content.
- Disable Allow Video Autoplay by toggling it to Off.
- While you are at it, disable Allow Audio Autoplay by toggling it to Off as well.
You won’t get fullscreen video trailers anymore when you turn on the TV and switch to the Fire TV device.
Note that turning this off will also impact preview videos while browsing Home only. The Amazon Prime Video app, and other apps for that matter, may still autoplay video and audio content.
Options to turn off these may be available, but this depends on the individual apps.
Closing Words
Amazon plays fullscreen video trailers for its content on Fire TV devices. Some may say that Amazon has every right to do so, others may disagree, especially if they don’t consume any Prime Video content on the device.
It is thankfully easy to turn off autoplay of audio and video content in Home. Amazon’s Prime Video app has its own set of preferences. There you find options to mute videos while browsing channels, which is better than having to tap on Mute on the remote each time you start browsing videos on the site.
Again, this is all about personal preferences. There are probably lots of users out there that love the preview feature. If you ask me, it is one of the most annoying things when it comes to streaming services.
Now You: do you use streaming service? What is your take on autoplaying content?