CES 2024: Amazon Unveils Matter Casting Standard as Interoperable Alternative to AirPlay

Amazon today announced Matter Casting, an interoperable rival to Apple's AirPlay feature, at CES 2024 (via Bloomberg).

echo show
Matter Casting will initially only support streaming content from Amazon's Prime Video app to Echo Show devices, but the feature will support Fire TV in the coming months. Later in the year, it will work across a range of other video services, including Plex, Starz, Pluto TV, Sling TV, and ZDF.

‌AirPlay‌ allows Apple device users to wirelessly stream video from an iPhone, iPad, or Mac to an Apple TV or another Mac, as well as stream audio from almost any Apple device to any HomePod, ‌Apple TV‌, or compatible third-party speaker. Google has a similar equivalent for its Chromecast devices called Google Cast. Both ‌AirPlay‌ and Google Cast are proprietary technologies, so Amazon's new feature is designed to be interoperable across platforms.

Apple and Google worked with Amazon on the Matter home standard, but they have not yet announced any plans to support Matter Casting and could choose to remain uninvolved. Nevertheless, it is clearly Amazon's wish to make video streaming apps and TV accessories work together more seamlessly, regardless of their platform.

Popular Stories

cook trump

Trump Responds to Apple Keeping Diversity Policies

Wednesday February 26, 2025 6:32 am PST by
In an all-caps post on Truth Social today, U.S. President Donald Trump said Apple should fully end its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. Tim Cook meeting with President Trump in 2017 "APPLE SHOULD GET RID OF DEI RULES, NOT JUST MAKE ADJUSTMENTS TO THEM," he wrote. Trump's post comes one day after Apple held its annual shareholders meeting, during which a majority of...
iOS 18

Apple Says iOS 18.4 Will Be Released in April With These New Features

Wednesday February 26, 2025 7:15 am PST by
In a recent press release, Apple confirmed that iOS 18.4 will be released in April. From the Apple News+ Food announcement:Coming with iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 in April, Apple News+ subscribers will have access to Apple News+ Food, a new section that will feature tens of thousands of recipes — as well as stories about restaurants, healthy eating, kitchen essentials, and more — from the...
apple watch ultra snow

6 Features Coming to the Apple Watch Ultra 3

Tuesday February 25, 2025 9:00 am PST by
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is expected to launch later this year, arriving two years after the previous model with a series of improvements. While no noticeable design changes are expected for the third generation since the company tends to stick with the same Apple Watch design through three generations before changing it, there are a series of internal upgrades on the way. By the time the ...
iPhone Fold Vertical Feature

Apple's 2026 Foldable iPhone Has No Visible Display Crease – Report

Tuesday February 25, 2025 2:58 am PST by
Apple is making significant headway on its long-rumored foldable iPhone, with a new report suggesting the company has achieved a major breakthrough by effectively eliminating the screen crease that plagues current foldable devices. According to Korean publication ETNews, Apple is finalizing its component suppliers for the foldable iPhone, with the selection process expected to be completed...
trump iphone dictation issue

Apple Fixing 'Trump' Dictation Processing Bug

Tuesday February 25, 2025 1:18 pm PST by
Multiple iPhone owners today noticed a pronunciation processing issue that causes the word "Trump" to momentarily show up when using dictation to send a message with the word "racist." In some cases, when speaking the word racist through the iPhone's built-in dictation feature, the iPhone briefly interprets the spoken word as "Trump" and "Trump" text shows up in the Messages app before being ...
airpods pro purple

Here's When AirPods Pro 3 Are Rumored to Launch

Monday February 24, 2025 9:14 am PST by
According to a post on X today from a leaker known as Kosutami, Apple plans to launch AirPods Pro 3 in May or June this year. The leaker also claimed that an AirTag 2 will launch around the same time. Kosutami is best known as a collector of prototype Apple hardware, but they have occasionally shared accurate information about Apple's future product plans. For example, they accurately...
airtag orange

AirTag 2 Rumored to Launch in May or June With These New Features

Monday February 24, 2025 6:11 am PST by
Apple plans to launch a second-generation AirTag in May or June this year, according to a post today from a leaker known as Kosutami. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman previously reported that a new AirTag would be released in mid-2025. May or June would align with that timeframe. Below, we recap three new features rumored for the AirTag 2: With a second-generation Ultra Wideband chip, the...
ios 18 4 carplay

iOS 18.4 Includes a Small But Useful Change for CarPlay

Sunday February 23, 2025 2:23 pm PST by
The first beta of iOS 18.4 is now available, and it includes a small but useful change for CarPlay. As we noted in our list of iOS 18.4 features, CarPlay now shows a third row of icons, up from two rows previously. However, this change is only visible in vehicles with a larger center display. For example, a MacRumors Forums member noticed the change in a Toyota Tundra, which can be equipped...

Top Rated Comments

brijazz Avatar
15 months ago
"Anything you cast will be interrupted by an ad every 20 minutes unless you give us an extra $2.99/month." - Amazon in six months, probably
Score: 32 Votes (Like | Disagree)
clebingames Avatar
15 months ago
Some crucial differences in how The Verge present this.

MacRumors: "Amazon today announced Matter Casting, an interoperable rival to Apple's AirPlay feature"

The Verge: "Amazon, one of the founders of Matter, is the first to add support for Matter casting, a feature of the Matter smart home standard"

Elsewhere (Techhive): "The new open casting standard is called Matter Casting, and yes, it’s part of the Matter smart home standard. At CES this week, Amazon announced that it will roll out Matter Casting to Fire TV and Echo Show 15 devices."

Seems like sloppy wording at the top of this article.
Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Porco Avatar
15 months ago
The xkcd ('https://xkcd.com/927/') that never stops being relevant…



Attachment Image
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
BuffaloTF Avatar
15 months ago

Forgive my cynicism, but I feel like Apple is only implementing the RCS as a means of staving off accusations of anti-competitiveness. I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for them to implement another protocol (if they even can... this is proprietary I'd assume).
I have the opposite feeling here. Matter is in its name, but Amazon is the one to be cynical of here. All my HomeKit devices play nicely with Matter, I can control them with Alexa commands. Anything “Made for Alexa” though… no way to set it up to Matter. There’s a Matter section in the app, but it’s to add external Matter devices to its device list, not to connect it to the service to open up its devices to other assistants. Even 3rd party devices I linked to my Hue hub that were previously no bueno on Home are now there with Philips adding Matter. It’s not really inspiring confidence here.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
WarmWinterHat Avatar
15 months ago
I'd rather there be a fully open, non-patented or proprietary casting protocol that everyone implements, on device, but Google and Apple don't want to let you out of the ecosystem. I don't see this helping too much. Matter doesn't seem to matter (ha) much, either, since it's not being implimented in a meaningful way.

We have Google Nest audio at our house... I can't send music with Apple Music, from my phone, to the device (I use Spotify now). I have an Homepod in my office, but my wife can't send music to it with her Pixel.

It's a garbage landscape, currently.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
G5isAlive Avatar
15 months ago

Isn't this what DLNA is supposed to have done for the past 20 years? Maybe people have figured out better ways to do this since then, and it's easier to make something new than fix DLNA which doesn't work the best, but maybe not.
The implementations of DLNA that I have seen are more like being a file server than serving files directly (if that makes sense). In other words it allowed me to browser around on different devices but not really just do it directly.

Anyway, here's hoping Apple adopts this without necessarily giving up its own tech, the same way they are broadening the use of Messages.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)