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Amazon has announced There are a lot of new hardware products last week, it's hard to know which one will answer the next time you shout "Alexa!" In your home. Perhaps not surprising, the microwave equipped with Alexa sucked a lot of air (electromagnetic) into the room: not only does the $ 60 microwave run indirectly with Alexa, but know when you miss popcorn.
But last week, the microwave was not the most interesting homemade product out of the Echo stack. It was the new Echo Show. This is a preview of Amazon's vision for future television – be it streaming video, live television or casual games on a big screen.
Amazon launched the Echo Show for the first time in June 2017. The two-in-one gadget combines a smart speaker and a screen; the first had a flat rectangular face and a thick lower half where the loudspeakers were housed. And yet, he found a welcome place on the counter of my kitchen. On the Echo tubular speakers delivered before the show, Alexa was disembodied, a floating voice that reacted in pleasant tones even when you were shouting from another room. With the Echo Show, Alexa suddenly had a face.
When you use your voice to set a timer, the countdown appears on the Echo Show screen. When you ask Alexa to play a video, it will appear on the screen (provided it's not a YouTube video because Google released YouTube videos of Amazon products last year). The home screen scrolls through a series of updates and teasers. It's not a perfect gadget, and some people find the front camera of the Echo Show is scary – but it's infinitely more useful than Echo Look, the other Amazon Echo with camera.
The new Echo Show refines the old model, going from a 7-inch screen to a 10-inch screen. But this new release, delivered next month for $ 230, says a lot about how Amazon thinks we'll interact with TVs and streaming video in the near future.
This bigger screen is one of them. The unspectacular display of the first Echo Show had a low resolution of 1024 by 600; this one is an HD screen. The speakers have been moved from the bottom of the device to the back, which means that the new Echo Show is mainly in the front. The speakers have also been upgraded. Several months before the launch of Echo Show, Amazon A / B has tested different speakers and has opted for two-inch neodymium drivers, made with rare earth metal, despite the additional cost of materials.
Looking at the dead thing, it would be easy to confuse it with a tablet. But in its entirety, it looks more like a small counter TV. As for a TV, you're not supposed to touch it even though Echo Show has a touch screen. That's why Amazon built it with eight far-field microphones – "our most powerful pickups of all time," says the company – so you can shout all day long.
While the new Echo Show hardware shows the immersive experience of TV manufacturers when they try to sell you their flat panel products, the software suggests it even more explicitly. Echo Show is one of three types of products (with an Amazon Fire TV key and a mobile app) compatible with a new gadget called Fire TV Recast. This redesign also serves as a live TV tuner and DVR. Adjust the Redesign at your local news station or live sport, or any other item available on live television, and you can broadcast it on your Echo Show screen.
"Fire TV Recast makes it easy to stream video anywhere in your home," Amazon wrote when announcing the redesign, "and not just your TV." In other words: watch more TV, but not necessarily on TV. Look at it on something like … the Echo Show. This is not a television, but it has turned into another form of access to Amazon's land ownership, namely a non-mapped smart home landscape. Two streaming TV applications will also be shown on Echo Show: NBC and Hulu, both live TV compatible.
Amazon already sells real TVs. Earlier this year, Amazon partnered with Best Buy to sell Fire TV branded TVs from Toshiba and Best Buy's Insignia label. This is another critical step in the infiltration of homes – and, like Roku, Amazon sells these TVs at a competitive price: $ 400 for a 55-inch, 4K Fire TV. Roku says Roku OS TVs are the fastest growing hardware segment. Amazon surely wants a piece of this pie.
But shortly after announcing its TVs, Amazon also announced the Fire TV Cube, a video streaming box controlled by Alexa. Use your voice to search for something to watch and the Fire TV Cube displays a voice interface in your TV. Take the Fire TV Cube remote control and the UI switches to something that could be navigable remotely.
This voice-activated interface on the Cube, however, was not designed from scratch. During a briefing for the Cube four months ago, Amazon executives said that the Echo Show had informed the UI of the Cube. "The reason we tried to run Echo Show is that voice interaction is different from remote interaction with television," said Sandeep Gupta, vice president of product development for Fire TV. "… it is presented in a way that can be traveled by voice."
I found the Fire TV Cube not very intuitive in its infancy. I never really got used to ordering after order just to find a show to watch, rather than scrolling, discreetly, with a remote. But this user interface is still used by Amazon. And the second-generation Echo Show might be more of a writing practice for that.
The Echo Show is not at all a television in the traditional sense. But if it looks like a small TV, shows live TV shows, and is not supposed to have your dirty fingers like a TV, well, it might just be a duck.
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