Earlier in the week Amazon and Google made good on their promise to start better supporting each other’s software on their hardware. Basically, YouTube returned to select Fire TV devices and in return Prime Video became available to Android TV devices.
A win for users of both platforms even though this was the result of a spat between Amazon and Google. Nevertheless, many more Android TV users should start to see Prime Video become available on their Android TV device. In addition, more users will also gain the option to add Prime Video to their home screen in the form of a “channel.”
NVIDIA SHIELD TV owners are no stranger to Prime Video as the SHIELD was one of the select few Android TV devices that proved exempt to the Amazon/Google dispute. Likewise, many of them will already be accustomed to the benefits of having Prime Video as a home screen channel.
Maybe not all of them, however.
Late last year a number of users started noting that home screen channel support for Prime Video had become available. At the time this seemed to be somewhat random with some device owners in some countries getting the updated support, but not others. Equally random, owners of more than one SHIELD device noted that one or some of their SHIELD units could display Prime Video as a channel on the home screen, while the others couldn’t. You can find multiple examples of the randomness of the rollout on reddit.
Needless to say, unless a SHIELD owner knew this feature was available, it is unlikely they had enabled it and now that Prime Video is starting to roll out as an officially available Android TV app, it’s probably time more device owners became aware of it – SHIELD or otherwise.
If you own the SHIELD and are not seeing the Prime Video channel on the home screen nor the option to enable the channel via the “Customize channels” option in settings then one way that seems to enable the feature is to reinstall the app.
Now, as Prime Video is a ‘system’ app on the SHIELD (not one the user has manually installed), there’s no option to uninstall the app to begin with. Thankfully, that doesn’t matter as going to the Prime Video app in settings and clicking on “Uninstall updates” does the same thing in this respect.
This will remove all of the updates for the app and return it to a ‘factory’ condition. You’ll then see the same “Uninstall updates” option turn to an “Update” button and clicking again will re-update the app again. Alternatively, SHIELD owners can achieve the same results by going to the Android TV version of the Play Store, searching for “Prime” and following the same update uninstall/reinstall instructions.
Regardless of which route taken, once the app has been re-updated, a restart of the SHIELD (either through the “Restart” option in the settings or by unplugging/plugging back in) should be all that’s needed. Once the system loads up again the Prime Video setting in “Customize channels” should appear.
From here on it’s just a matter of enabling the channel like you would any other on Android TV.
Owners of an Android TV device other than the SHIELD will need to wait until their device receives the new support for the Prime Video app before taking advantage of the home screen channel functionality. When that does happen there’s a good chance the Prime Video channel support will be immediately accessible.
If it’s not, then the same method suggested here might be worth a try.