Amazon Fire TV Stick is finally getting this missing app
Vudu is finally coming to the Amazon Fire TV Stick
This month, the Amazon Fire TV Stick (and Cube, too) will finally fill the gap on one of its most curiously missing applications. That's Vudu, the movies and TV streaming app formerly owned by Walmart which was sold to NBCUniversal's Fandango in 2020.
With its arrival, Vudu opens up another way to buy and rent digital movies and TV shows on Amazon. Vudu's library of more than 150,000 movies and shows includes more than 10,000 free titles as well.
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The Vudu app may not be available on your Fire TV device at the moment, as the app is having one of those staggered rollouts. Check back later this month if you don't see it when searching Vudu.
When we checked how Roku and Fire TV stacked up on missing apps, Vudu was one of the two notable missing services on the latter. Fire TV still lacks Peacock (which launched nationwide in July 2020). Peacock's lack of a Fire TV app will be more glaring in the coming months, as the WWE Network disappears in the US as its content gets vaccumed up into Peacock.
While Vudu isn't one of the titans of the video on demand streaming services market, it did experience "double-digit growth in new accounts in 2020 year over year," according to the press release announcing its arrival.
The free movies and shows Vudu offers will help Fire TV owners get more choices for what to watch without paying. Plus, anyone who ever bought something on Vudu on a different device will now get those purchases unlocked.
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Henry is a managing editor at Tom’s Guide covering streaming media, laptops and all things Apple, reviewing devices and services for the past seven years. Prior to joining Tom's Guide, he reviewed software and hardware for TechRadar Pro, and interviewed artists for Patek Philippe International Magazine. He's also covered the wild world of professional wrestling for Cageside Seats, interviewing athletes and other industry veterans.
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Haggemano I didn't realize that Peacock was missing. I must have side loaded it when it came out. The only real distinction between doing that and having native support is that in order to watch something on Peacock, I need to open the Peacock app. I can't search Fire and have it find results from Peacock along with other relevant hits. But didn't HBO MAX do the same thing even with the supported app? I don't keep up. If they still don't allow true integration, it means less use of their service because if I do a general search, I won't find out that HBO has it.Reply
Allowing Amazon to integrate things is to the benefit of the other companies, and the benefit of their own customers, not to the benefit of Amazon so much. Allowing Roku to support an app means giving Roku users access. At least with Fire, I can get access to anything that runs on Android. And there's a community out there that will do the work for me, so I can find it, click it, and install it.