Amazon’s Fire TV will soon become much more flexible. The e-commerce giant on Friday launched Amazon Fling SDK, a cross-platform toolkit that will allow developers to enhance their Android, iOS and Fire OS mobile apps with Chromecast-like “casting.”
Specifically, the SDK allows mobile apps to “fling” video, audio and images to Fire TV. Developers can also leverage two-way communication between Amazon’s media streamer and mobile apps to create multi-screen experiences.
The new functionality puts Amazon Fire TV on par with Google’s Chromecast. It's unclear if the SDK also works with Amazon's smaller Fire TV Stick.
Amazon said the SDK is designed to simplify the process of dealing with underlying network discovery and communication technologies that connect apps to televisions. What's more, the Fling SDK can be easily integrated into existing apps that work with Chromecast.
In its press release, Amazon highlighted a couple of apps that are already leveraging the new SDK. Karaoke Party, which was one of the first karaoke smartphone apps to hit the market, is now using the SDK to display song lyrics and videos on Fire TV and to send audio from the microphone to the media player.
Rivet Radio, meanwhile, now lets users listen to news on the TV. Amazon said it’s easy to switch between listening on a mobile device and flinging to a TV.
Developers that are interested in adding fling capabilities to their app(s) are encouraged to read the getting started documentation. The SDK can be downloaded by clicking here and there's an FAQ here if you need additional assistance.
https://www.techspot.com/news/61315-amazon-new-fling-sdk-gives-mobile-apps-chromecast.html
