Amazon adds new Alexa features to Fire TV

Amazon has gone to great lengths in the past year or so to expand its Alexa voice assistant beyond the Echo connected speaker. On Tuesday, one of its other devices that taps the cloud-based Alexa--the Fire TV media streamer--got a whole lot better on Tuesday in an announcement that demonstrates how far behind Google's recently announced Google Home device already is. While the new features are not immediately available, Amazon will roll these out via software updates over the next few weeks. Among the key new features are Fire TV app-launching capabilities and the option to ask Alexa to play content from Amazon Video and any add-on subscription content, as well as the capability to find movie showtimes at nearby theaters, read Kindle ebooks, and local business search. The update is the most comprehensive for Alexa on Fire TV to date.