People having Amazon Fire TV and Alexa-enabled devices like the Echo smart speaker can leave the remote aside and go all-voice. The new update will roll out soon and some new hands-free features will be added to Fire TV and people would be able to use them to see calendars or the weather, control menus and play music.
A large number of smart display-features are already available on Fire TV because of the Amazon voice remote and the new thing is the ability to access it hands-free. Users just need to pair an external Alexa-enabled device like the Amazon Echo to make it work. The Fire TV Cube is not yet available in India and it is the only one of the streaming boxes of Amazon that has far-fled mics to handle hands-free voice controls built in the device.
Users could have paired Alexa-enabled devices with Fire TV for hands-free control for the last few years but the functionality is limited till now and has particularly accommodated opening apps, playing movies and shows, searching for content and controlling playback.
The main feature is that people would be able to turn the TV into something more like the Echo Show smart speaker as they would be able to ask it to show the calendar, weather and the feed from a compatible internet-connected camera. There are a few navigable controls that would allow the users to verbally scroll left, right and ‘go back’.
Amazon will also add more features for music playback and would let the smart speaker play music from TV speakers.
According to Amazon, the new features will start to roll out on all Alexa-enabled, Fire TV and Fire TV Edition devices except Echo Show and Echo Spot. This will also include Fire TV devices that can predate the voice remote of Amazon. Amazon also said that the functionality will be available in US, UK and Canada. There is no confirmation on whether this would come to India or not.