Home Entertainment VOICE CONTROL
Voices in the machines
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Alexa and Google Assistant are making the smart home a reality, but what about home entertainment? Jamie Carter fi nds out when we can start talking to TVs.
I f you can’t stand Alexa, get out of the
kitchen. So far, voice control has been dominated by consumers setting cooking timers and playing music through small smart speakers. However, that era of voice-controlled novelty is fast fading as smart speakers spread through smart homes to control every gadget you can think of. After some false starts in the past, 2019 seems set to be the year when Alexa, Google Assistant, and even Siri and Bixby, find their way into home entertainment and hi-fi equipment.
How popular are smart speakers? The voice assistant revolution is being fought by smart speakers. Consumers love them. A massive 22 per cent of internet users in the UK have a smart speaker, the highest rate in Europe, with Germany (17 per cent) and France (14 per cent) behind, according to eMarketer. Amazon announced in late 2018 that it had sold 100,000 Alexa-powered devices, mostly its Echo smart speakers, while Google said at January’s CES in Las Vegas that a billion devices with Google Assistant had been shipped. Seems a tad high? That would be because Google included all Android smartphones. Having battled with remote controls for years, hands-free voice control is being embraced by consumers. “Voice is such a natural way of interaction, it’s so much less taxing on the brain than typing, and being able to ask for things or to command things naturally is something consumers respond to,” says Jim Cridlin, Global Head of Innovation and Partnership at global media agency Mindshare. Instructing something using a voice
Siri is making a comeback thanks to Apple HomePod
TVs like the LG W9 OLED TV are beginning to embrace voice control
command is basically a shortcut. “Voice assistants enable ever more effective browsing and discovery of content, providing an essential shortcut through the user interface and improving the overall user experience,” adds Jack Wetherill, Senior Market Analyst at Futuresource Consulting. “This has to be good news for hardware makers, content providers, and consumers.”
‘Built-in’ vs ‘Works With’ There is a fundamental difference between the ‘built-in’ or ‘works with’ messaging on home
entertainment (and other) products that claim to be voice assistant-compatible. The ‘Alexa built- in’ badge means what it says, and refers to the Amazon Echo and Echo Dot, but also certified third-party smart speakers. For example, a soundbar with the ‘Alexa built-in’ badge doesn’t require there to be an Amazon Echo and Echo Dot around. Meanwhile, a ‘works with Alexa’ badge simply guarantees that a device will work with any ‘Alexa built-in’ device; these terms should really should be used to differentiate high-end ‘hub’ products from mere accessories.
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