Amazon may make a free, ad-supported streaming service for Fire TVs

Enlarge / The Fire TV Cube itself is a small, glossy cube with IR emitters built into its sides. (credit: Jeff Dunn)

Amazon may be gearing up to launch a new video-streaming service, but one that differs greatly from Prime Video. According to a report by The Information, the online retailer's subsidiary IMDb is developing an ad-supported streaming service that would be available to all Fire TV device users.

Free Dive is the purported name of the service, and it's said to be similar to The Roku Channel on Roku streaming devices. Roku's service offers a bunch of licensed shows, movies, and other video content for free to Roku device users, but viewers have to watch advertisements peppered throughout that content. Roku recently expanded The Roku Channel to Web users in the US as well, so those who do not have a Roku streaming device can also watch that content for free.

The Information's report estimates that Amazon could reach the 48 million Fire TV users with this ad-supported service. That's a lot of potential eyeballs, many of which will be amenable to sitting through a few advertisements to watch free movies and shows.

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