Home Entertainment VOICE CONTROL
The Optoma UHL55 4K home cinema projector can be controlled using Alexa
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LED 4K Ultra HD smart TVs – which supports both Alexa and Google Assistant – have got a mid- year update to allow users to stream videos, music and photos from Apple products via AirPlay 2. Meanwhile, HomeKit support will enable users to easily control the TVs using Siri voice commands or the Home app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Sony has also added AirPlay 2 and HomeKit to
its Android TVs, namely its A9G OLED 4K, X950G Series and even its flagship Z9G 8K LCD. Sony confirmed that the HomeKit compatibility will let users control smart home products using the Home app, or by asking Siri to do so via Apple devices. So, for example, a user could say “film night” to Siri and an automated skill could switch on the TV and dim the lights. Does all of this mean Siri is coming to home cinemas? Absolutely, though in the case of Samsung’s TVs it could mean something else entirely. After all, Samsung’s own voice assistant, the much-berated Bixby, can be used to search Apple’s content just as easily.
Is the remote control dying? Can voice control get rid of all the clutter at our fingertips? It could, but it’s probably not going to just yet. “We are at the beginning of the stage where voice will kill off a lot of the ways we used to do things, and remote controls are one of those things,” says Jim Cridlin. The main block to progress is that TVs themselves are not yet
Speaker’s corner
Smart speakers are not about sound quality, as anyone who has listened to an Amazon Echo Dot or Google Home Mini will know. However, there are reasons to believe that the so far untouched world of hi-fi is being slowly dragged into the voice control era. The first sign was Sonos, which in the last year has gone from being a multi-room audio system to now being better described as a voice-controlled smart speaker system. Meanwhile, Amazon has recently introduced some hi-fi components. Its Echo Input is basically a dongle that adds far-field
Toshiba showed-off an Alexa-enabled OLED TV at IFA 2018
convinced when it comes to voice control. There are also technical issues with voice
control than guarantee remote controls’ continued existence, at least for now. “Most TV sets that have voice assistant capability involve a microphone in the remote control, similar to those used in media streamers such as Amazon’s Fire TV stick,” says Wetherill, about how voice has so far been integrated into TVs. “The role of the remote is therefore assured at least until manufacturers include microphones in the sets themselves, something which involves an additional cost in solving technical issues such as noise and echo cancellation related to the microphones being located near the TV speakers.” For all the talk of voice control and home entertainment, the elephant in the room has to be overtly visual platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime. “We search for content on our TVs using ‘visual discovery’, which can make voice very frustrating,” comments Rob Bennett, CEO at creative tech company Rehab. “Voice is great for short commands, but if you’re trying to navigate Netflix or Amazon Prime then a remote control is 100 times better – I haven’t seen anything that is demonstrably
Alexa experiences to existing connected devices. Will it be a success? “Amazon is targeting Echo Input at home hi-fi, though this product is nothing revolutionary, being really just an Echo Dot without the speaker [pictured right],” continues Wetherill. “It has Bluetooth and 3.5mm jack so it’s possible to bring a Bluetooth speaker or existing hi-fi into the Alexa environment.” At £34.99, the Echo Input is cheaper than the Echo Dot and more discreet. “We expect it to be much less successful than the Echo Dot because many consumers use the Echo Dot as a speaker in its own right, plus Echo Input requires that your hi-fi or speakers are continually switched on for verbal responses.”
better than a remote for scrolling through a menu.”
What happens next? The future of voice is not control, but chat. Streaming platforms have so far been silent, but for how long? “There’s a big opportunity with entertainment and voice integration for how viewers can engage with a platform and its content,” says Bennett, who thinks that something like the Netflix homepage could one day be personalised by rich media chatbot-style conversations. Things like ‘I need a catch-up’ or ‘who is that character?’ during a programme. He likens such conversation-enabled onscreen assistants to an AI-powered version of Microsoft Office’s animated helper from the 1990s called Clippy, but the point is serious. “There are a lot of AI chatbots online already, and as they get better and people get used to them, they’ll find their way onto other devices,” adds Bennett. Voice control may be what everyone is
talking about right now, but the future for home entertainment is not about commands, but conversation. Either way, we’re very soon likely to look back at this era of barked “Alexa, volume up” voice commands with great amusement.
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