You'll see Amazon's Alexa dominate the New York Toy Fair as toymakers figure out how to use the digital assistant to add new sound experiences to games.
Alexa, shall we play a game?
Amazon's smart assistant is making her way into playtime, with Mattel and other toymakers adding Alexa voice commands to products to enhance game play. Several such toys are due this fall, and this weekend some will be on display at the ginormous New York Toy Fair.
In many of these products, you can't actually play against Alexa. Instead she's a guide, keeping score, reading rules and setting the mood with sound effects and music.
In an age when parents are accustomed to syncing toys with smartphone apps, it's not much of a leap for companies to want to leverage smart speakers. Industry watchers expect Amazon's Echo speakers to be in more than 66.3 million US households by 2022.
Why make your own voice recognition system and battle privacy worries when you can use one already trusted in millions of homes?
"We know that more than one in five parents of connected children own a voice-controlled internet-connected smart speaker," said Sven Gerjets, Mattel's chief technology officer. "Nearly all parents who have a smart speaker feel comfortable with their child using it."
Mattel's first dip into Alexa isn't geared toward young kids, though. It's a puzzle-solving game for adults called Escape Room in a Box: The Werewolf Experiment. It costs $29.99 on Amazon. Having an Echo isn't required, but it does add ambiance by playing a spooky soundtrack while also acting as a timer and a source for hints.
Alexa is required to play Sensible Object's "When in Rome," a travel trivia game out later this year. Sensible Object
London-based Sensible Object is taking a similar approach with its upcoming voice-augmented board game Voice Originals: When in Rome. The travel trivia game, to be priced at $29.99, uses voice actors and sound effects as the players explore the world. Alexa, and eventually Google Assistant and Apple's Siri, will help keep track of scores and will give guidance on rules. (Basically all the boring things.)
"No one wants to be the guy or girl that reads the rules and tells people they are doing something wrong," said Alex Fleetwood, chief executive and founder of Sensible Object.
But playing with Alexa means having to invoke her name throughout the game with the correct trigger phrase. "Alexa, which team is winning?""Alexa, ask Escape Room for a hint." "Alexa, this isn't my suitcase."
One startup is getting around that.
Novel Effect, based in Seattle, created a way for music and sound effects to play when parents are reading a classic book to their kid. No one wants to interrupt the middle of a bedtime story with Alexa commands, though. In "Where the Wild Things Are," when Max cries out to let the wild rumpus start, he's not asking Alexa for permission.
So Novel Effect is collaborating directly with Amazon to make the actual words from the books be the trigger words for sound effects (as long as you first activated the Novel Effect skill program).
Right now Novel Effect exists as an iOS app. But CEO Matt Hammersley says that when his Alexa program launches, it'll be smoother and quicker than opening up the app.
Voice over visuals
Voice assistants can replace the need to stare at a smartphone screen. The Play Impossible Gameball is a Bluetooth-connected foam outdoor ball stuffed with sensors. A smartphone app displays challenges for tossing the Gameball around, and and it keeps track of your progress and speed. Later this year, Play Impossible wants to just let Alexa keep track of your prowess.
Scout, the latest voice-recognition talking toy from Elemental Path, is scheduled to hit stores later this year. Elemental Path
Voice technology is tricky for toy companies to tackle. Parents can worry about the privacy of a toy that's always listening. And creating voice-recognition systems that understand little kid babble isn't cheap -- especially when the responses need to be safe, fresh and fun.
Take it from Elemental Path co-founder John Paul Benini. His company has been investing in this technology for three and a half years, creating several educational talking toys for kids ages 5 and up. According to Benini, Elemental Path has raised roughly $4.5 million so far, and later this year it plans to launch Scout, a $150 robot buddy programmed with a childlike curiosity that prompts it to strike up conversations with its owner.
Can Alexa show Barbie how to get down?
Mattel canceled an earlier attempt at doing voice on its own. Hello Barbie Hologram, revealed at last year's Toy Fair, was designed to be a type of personal assistant for young kids. A voice-controlled animated Barbie projection lived inside a glowing, pink speaker box. Powered by Mattel's own blend of secure software, it answered to "Hello, Barbie" and would report on the weather, set reminders, play music, give yoga lessons -- and also throw dance parties on request.
The problem? Too expensive. It was to be listed for $235, and Mattel's consumer testing found that it was too pricey for the play value, according to a company spokeswoman. It never made it to store shelves.
Leveraging Amazon's system is, of course, much more cost effective for toy companies big and small.
So perhaps Barbie may have to use Alexa to throw her next dance party.
Vizio introduces a voice skill for Amazon Alexa that works with certain SmartCast TVs.
Select Vizio 4K TVs now work with Alexa, thanks to a SmartCast skill released today. Customers with a P-, M- or E-series SmartCast display and an Amazon smart speaker can control their TV hands-free. Turn the display on and off, adjust the volume, channel and input and even tell your Alexa speaker to pause, fast forward or rewind -- all with simple voice commands.
Vizio also plans to make its skill available to folks with SmartCast Full HD and HD TVs "in the coming weeks."
Vizio's SmartCast TVs give you access to apps from the display; the related SmartCast mobile app gives you access from your phone.
In addition to Alexa, Vizio SmartCast displays also work with Google Assistant, the AI that powers its Home, Home Mini and Home Max speakers.
Google is bringing gadget maker Nest back under its control as the search giant battles rivals Amazon and Apple in the rapidly expanding smart home market. A big part of the change: Making it easier to add Google's artificial intelligence technology and Assistant -- a digital helper that competes against Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri -- into new Nest products.
The world's largest search engine has staked its future on building Google smarts into devices beyond smartphones. On Wednesday, Google said Nest was part of its plans and would no longer operate as a separate division that lived in the outer orbit of parent company Alphabet's "Other Bets" group of projects.
Instead, Nest rejoins the Google mothership -- the part of Alphabet that houses search, YouTube, Android mobile software and other moneymakers. Nest, acquired by Google in 2014, had been operating outside of Google, the only profitable division of Alphabet, for the past three years.
Under the new org structure, Nest CEO Marwan Fawaz reports to Google's hardware chief, Rick Osterloh, a former Motorola executive who took charge of all Google's consumer devices in 2016. That includes Google Home smart speakers, Pixel smartphones and Chromecast streaming devices.
Nest CEO Marwan Fawaz says the company has shipped 11 million products to date. James Martin/CNET
"All of Google's investments in machine learning and AI, they can very clearly benefit Nest products. It just makes sense to be developing them together," Osterloh said in an interview Tuesday, which included Fawaz and took place in a meeting room designed to look like a home, complete with a kitchen and a washer-dryer setup. "It's the natural thing to evolve to."
Nest's brand, known for its 2011 internet-connected thermostat, isn't going anywhere, Osterloh and Fawaz said. In fact, the two drilled home the message that the reunion of the teams will "supercharge Nest's mission," as Fawaz put it. They used the word "supercharge" at least five times during our 40-minute interview at Nest headquarters in Palo Alto, California.
Fawaz said Nest has shipped more than 11 million products since its first thermostat went on sale in 2011. Since it's been part of "Other Bets," Alphabet doesn't call out how much money Nest makes or loses.
The biggest change: Making Google's AI technology a staple in future Nest products. I asked if that means making every new Nest device an access point for the Google Assistant. That integration is "core to the strategy," said Fawaz, but nothing is set in stone. Nest has already begun building the Assistant into devices like its Nest Cam IQ indoor camera.
Nest and Google have already plotted out and finalized their hardware roadmaps for 2018, but in the next two years, they'll start co-developing products. Google also plans to offer more bundled packages for Nest and Google devices, like one deal last year that paired Nest products over $100 with a free Google Home Mini. Fawaz said people could also eventually use their Google accounts with their Nest app.
One thing that isn't changing: Nest, which won't say how many employees it has, will keep its offices in Palo Alto, instead of moving to the Googleplex in nearby Mountain View.
The decision to merge Nest with Google comes as tech's biggest companies work to infuse their software into every aspect of people's lives, from their cars to homes. People will spend $1 trillion on the so-called "internet of things" by 2020, according to Gartner. And they'll spend over $50 billion on smart home tech in 2022 -- up from $31 billion this year -- according to Statista.
But right now the gateway drug is smart speakers. Amazon dominates that world with its Echo devices, owning 69 percent of the market. Google is far behind with 31 percent, according to a report by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. Apple, meanwhile, officially enters the market when its new HomePod speaker goes on sale Feb. 9.
Nest was previously a semi-independent unit of Alphabet, Google's parent company. CNET
Nest's reunion with Google isn't a complete surprise. In November, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google was considering bringing Nest back into the fold. Osterloh and Fawaz said the merger has been in the works for the last few months. Since the two groups already partner on supply chain operations, packaging and event launches, it made sense for them to be one unit, they said.
Being under the same org chart also makes it easier for Nest to use Google's AI technology, the foundation for its Assistant and the key to new products like its Google Lens and Google Photos services.
"We've leveraged AI capabilities from Google in the past, especially in the computer vision space and facial recognition," Fawaz said. "Being part of the Google family, we get closer to that."
'The whole world is shifting'
A lot has changed since Google bought Nest for $3 billion nearly four years ago. That same year, Amazon introduced its Echo smart speaker, a surprise hit and a big slap to Google and Apple, which were already working on voice search. Google followed in 2016 with Home, a smart speaker that promised to put Google's leading search engine a few voice commands away. And this week, reviews went up for Apple's HomePod, a $350 Siri-enabled smart speaker that Apple touts as having better audio quality than its rivals.
Google has bulked up its hardware efforts in other areas too. Osterloh, former president of Motorola, was tapped two years ago by Google CEO Sundar Pichai to create a new consumer device effort. Though Google has always dabbled in hardware -- think the Nexus Q media player or Chromebook laptops -- Pichai wanted to prove the company was all-in this time around. Under Osterloh, Google unveiled its first branded phone, the Pixel, in October 2016 to rival Apple's iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy. It also added a virtual reality headset, a Wi-Fi router and new Chromecast video and audio streamers to its "Made by Google" product lineup.
Maybe the biggest sign that Google no longer considers hardware a hobby is its $1 billion investment in smartphone manufacturer HTC, which brings to Google over 2,000 HTC engineers -- many of whom already worked on the Pixel phone. The deal officially closed last week.
Google also put on a show last month in Las Vegas at CES, the world's largest consumer electronics conference. In past years, Google has typically laid low while its manufacturing partners, including Samsung and LG, made all the noise. But this year, the company set up a massive stage to showcase its gadgets and plastered the words "Hey Google" -- one of the trigger phrases for the Google Assistant -- over the Las Vegas Monorail. White-suited Google workers greeted showgoers in booths across the conference floor with the sole aim of telling them about how Google Assistant worked with various gadgets, from TVs to headphones.
Nest will be joining Google's hardware division, led by former Motorola executive Rick Osterloh. James Martin/CNET
Meanwhile, after a two-year slump in which it didn't enter new product categories, Nest in September added devices and services, including the Nest Hello smart doorbell and the Nest Secure alarm system.
"It's just a logical move," said Bob O'Donnell, an analyst with Technalysis. "The whole world is shifting. Amazon did a good job of recognizing an opportunity. Others are recognizing it and adjusting accordingly."
Hey, Alexa
When it comes to their smart home rivalry, Google and Amazon haven't been afraid to play hardball -- sometimes at the expense of customers.
Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, doesn't sell Google Home. Instead, searching for that product on Amazon brings results for other products, including the e-commerce giant's rival Echo speaker. Amazon sells some Nest products, like the smart thermostat and smoke detector, but not others, such as the Nest E, a cheaper $170 version of its thermostat, or the Nest Secure alarm system. Also, after banning sales of Google's Chromecast streamers two years ago, in December Amazon agreed to bring them back.
Google, meanwhile, cut off YouTube from working on Amazon's Echo Show video device and Fire TV. And at CES, Google tapped partners including Sony to introduce four new video devices with the Assistant built-in to compete with the Echo Show.
Google has made big investments in hardware with its Google Home line of products. CNET
Google, Amazon and Apple know getting adoption for their voice assistants is the key to future riches. Over 5 billion devices that support digital assistants, including Alexa and Google Assistant, will be in use by consumers in 2018, according to IHS Markit, with nearly 3 billion more added by 2021. Of those devices, 39 million will be smart speakers, up from about 27 million units sold in 2017.
That all raises the question: Will Nest's closer relationship with Google mean Nest products stop working with Amazon Alexa?
"This announcement doesn't change that," Fawaz said. "If there are any changes in the future, we'll certainly make sure it's the right decision for consumers."
I pressed them again about the potential for this new arrangement to change the relationship with Amazon.
"I would call Amazon and ask them," Osterloh said. "We don't know. We want to work with Amazon in an open, transparent, symmetrical way. Hopefully they want to do the same. We're continuing discussions with them on that."
(We're checking with Amazon and will update this story when we get a response.)
A rocky tenure
When Nest appeared in 2011, it was a novel enterprise from a leader with a storied pedigree. Nest co-founder and former CEO Tony Fadell became known as the Godfather of the iPod after he played a key role, with Steve Jobs, in developing the seminal music player. Following Fadell's departure from Apple in 2010, he and Nest co-founder Matt Rogers focused on reinventing another market. The answer: a smart remake of home thermostats. The idea was to create a whole suite of forgotten household products that had been reimagined for the internet era. The startup announced its second product, the Nest Protect smoke detector, in 2013.
In 2014, Google bought Nest. That was, in part, to inject the search giant with some of the product magic Fadell brought with him from Apple. But Nest's tenure at Google has been rocky. There was public drama after Nest paid $555 million for Dropcam, maker of the security camera it eventually turned into the Nest Cam. After the buyout, Dropcam CEO Greg Duffy left the company and has since called the acquisition a "mistake." Under Nest, more than 50 Dropcam employees resigned. Duffy has said Dropcam's product roadmap was derailed.
When Google created Alphabet in August 2015, Nest became its own division, alongside other units including Google, the moonshot factory X and health tech company Verily.
It was Nest, though, with its own brand, team and offices, that was supposed to be the model for how the new Alphabet structure would work. But instead of becoming the Platonic ideal for an Alphabet company, Nest underwent more scrutiny. Meanwhile, Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat tightened spending at the "Other Bets."
Fadell stepped down in 2016, and Fawaz took his place. Fawaz and Osterloh met in 2012 while both working at Motorola. Google briefly owned Motorola before selling it off to Lenovo for $3 billion in 2012, but neither executive came to Google as a direct result of that acquisition.
Today, all Fawaz will say about Nest's past is that the stories were "a bit exaggerated."
As for the way Alphabet is set up, Fawaz defended it. "Each bet is different. We have different journeys," he said. "In this particular case, Rick and I came together and said, '[Nest rejoining Google] makes sense.'"
"Other bets will have different journeys. They can have a different outcome," Fawaz added. "There's not one size that fits all in the model."
Nest co-founder Tony Fadell says Google hurt its smart assistant efforts when it spun off the maker of net-connected gadgets not long after acquiring it.
Google's announcement this week that it's bringing Nest back under its wing has some former employees of the smart-thermostat maker saying the company never should've been spun off in the first place.
Tony Fadell, co-founder and ex-CEO of Nest, said both companies' efforts in connected gadgets were hurt when Google made Nest a separate business less than two years after acquiring it. Google bought Nest in 2014 for $3.2 billion, and the spin-off happened in 2015 during the restructuring that created the Alphabet holding company.
"From the outside it looked like Nest was the perfect poster child for Alphabet," Fadell told CNBC in an interview Friday, "but at the same time, separating it was undoing the thing that was most essential for both companies -- figuring out how to make them work together."
On Wednesday, Google said Nest would no longer operate as a separate divisionunder Alphabet's "Other Bets" group. Instead, it's rejoining Google as the tech powerhouse looks to work its artificial intelligence technology and smart assistant into new Nest products. That effort comes as rival Amazon unleashes a bombardment of Echo gadgets equipped with its Alexa smart assistant and Apple touts its HomePod smart speaker, which relies on Siri.
But Fadell, who left Nest in mid-2016 amid questions regarding sales goals and workplace culture, told CNBC that bringing Google's AI smarts to Nest gadgets had always been the point.
"Nest was acquired by Google for a specific reason," Fadell told the network. "I pitched it as 'We are the senses and you are the brain.'"
Two other former Nest employees, who wished to remain anonymous, told CNBC that after the Alphabet restructuring, Google and Nest staffers weren't properly encouraged to work together. The two teams were also kept in the dark about each other's projects, even when those efforts were similar, and even after Amazon began gobbling up the smart-home market with its Echo and Alexa products. Google reportedly tried to sell Nest in 2016 but abandoned that effort.
"I think it would have helped had the [mergers and acquisitions] team put something in place in the early days to structure and incentivize Google and us in a way that would have led to more cooperation," one of the ex-employees told the network.
"It was like a soap opera," one of the former staffers said.
A culture clash might have been involved. Fadell, an ex-Apple executive and disciple of Steve Jobs, is known as the godfather of the iPod, and played a key role in the development of the iPhone. His joining the search giant was seen by many as Google co-founder Larry Page's attempt to inject his company with Apple's storied hardware sensibility. But Apple's rigid and secretive culture is a stark contrast from Google's open and experimental one.
Fadell told CNBC he'd like to see Google's effort to marry its AI technology to Nest products succeed this time around.
"For the sake of Nest customers and talent," he said, "I hope they follow through on their commitment they made to us four years ago instead of trying to sell it off like they did just two years ago."
Otter's artificial intelligence absorbs recorded conversations and churns out transcripts that identify speakers, suggest keywords and offer text search.
If you don't hate transcribing, it's probably just because you don't have to do it very much.
Otter, a new, free mobile app from a team of vets from Google and speech-recognition company Nuance, aims to make voice transcriptions become as easy and accessible as typing into a Google Doc.
Voice is an obsession of tech giants right now. But companies like Amazon, Google and Apple are mostly zeroed in voice-command assistants like Alexa or Siri, premised on the bet that voice interaction will become the next stage of computing. Getting less attention, though, are voice transcriptions -- tech that takes a recording of people talking and turns it in to text -- even though that kind of technology could be transformative for people across different needs and professions.
Most transcription apps or services fall into two buckets. If they're free, they're not often accurate. And those that give you clean transcript are usually expensive. That's because voice-to-text is technologically tricky, and most services that provide you with accurate transcripts usually need a human to review the recording.
Otter, which debuted this week at Mobile World Congress, aims to make transcripts not only free and accurate but also smart.
Otter is a free mobile app aiming to make transcription simple and easy. Mark Licea/CNET
"This is a perfect time," said Sam Liang, the CEO and founder of AISense, the company behind Otter. "With A.I. tech and deep in the last few years, the accuracy for speech recognition has improved dramatically. A few years ago, this system wouldn't be usable."
To use Otter, you tap a microphone icon to begin a recording, and almost immediately, a live raw transcript of what you're saying begins to unspool in front of you. It's after that recording ends that Otter's artificial intelligence can really do its work. After processing, the cleaned-up transcript separates speakers as they take turns to talk. As part of your sign-up process, Otter takes a "voiceprint" of you by asking you to read a five-paragraph statement so it can learn your voice and specifically identify you next to the passages you spoke.
Otter's transcripts also are searchable, not only within one transcript but across all your stored recordings. It automatically generate keywords that you can tap to search. You can form teams in Otter, and content can be shared within the Otter app with individuals or team members. You can also send anyone a link to a transcript viewable on the web.
In one neat feature, the text and audio are synchronized when you playback the recording, so if you tap on any part of the transcript, the audio will jump right to that place for quick accuracy checks. The app also highlights each word as its spoken during an audio playback.
It's not a perfect transcription. Punctuation is sometimes out of whack. It misidentifies some words -- I told Otter "Hi, I'm Joan" and my readout picked up my name as John, for example. And it's less successful in a crowded environment or during cross-talk. And the app, which was released publicly Monday, is somewhat buggy in its early days. When I opened it once, all my recordings and their transcripts from the previous day were missing. Restarting the app restored them, but you may notice other bugs.
And it lacks some tantalizing capabilities, like importing a previously recorded conversation. The app and its baseline transcription service is and will remain free, but the company plans to add a subscription tier later that unlocks extra utilities, along the same lines as Evernote's business model.
Its privacy relationship with your materials is similar to that of an Evernote, too. Otter is confidential and encrypted. And the company isn't building an ad-based business with Otter, so it's not interested in peeking into your materials so it can creating a profile that will target ads to you, the company said.
Otter is available for devices running Google's Android system and on Apple mobile products. and will be available on the web, iOS and Android.
In the race for in-ear AI, Apple has the clear advantage despite the fact that their intelligent assistant is one of the dumbest of the bunch.
Yesterday, reports emerged that Apple was working on a pair of follow-ups to its Airpods headphones that could bring them always-on Siri functionality as well as a splash-proof design. As we think about all the things that Apple could do right with its next set of wireless earbuds, it’s easy to reflect on all that Google did wrong with its Pixel Buds and how much of an opportunity they still have.
Google Assistant lends so much potential to a pair of smart wireless earbuds from Google. The fact is that Siri doesn’t hold a candle to Google Assistant in many ways, and while the functionality of voice control on the AirPods is largely focused on music and calls, the superior intelligence of Google Assistant should make them a much clearer companion for a set of earbuds.
Hardware is still very much a side project for Google, but as the company prioritizes home assistant hardware, it really doesn’t make sense that they’re not putting more resources into a pair of wireless headphones. The Pixel Buds need a more purposeful design that minimizes friction and delivers Assistant insights more effortlessly in a package that feels like more than just a follow-on.
The AirPods are an engineering marvel, and while some of the functionality of the Pixel Buds was interesting — mainly their ability to interface with the Pixel 2 for language translation — they fell flat on design. Google needs to rethink its wireless earbuds from the ground-up and focus more on creating something with the sleekness of the Pixel phones rather than the fabric-obsessed friendliness of their Home devices. Cutting the woven cord and moving to a truly wireless form factor is a necessary step, as is shrinking down the size of the Bud part of the product. It’s really not about the sound quality as much as it is about the connectivity and the lack of friction. While FastPair has been a great step in simplifying the bluetooth pairing, there are still some quirks that aren’t present with Apple’s W1 chip.
While Siri is always quick to refer you to search results when it doesn’t have an answer (a frequent occurrence), Assistant’s optimization for its display-free Home devices has led it to order functionality around the assumption that there’s not always a screen available to default to. Today, Google announced that it was bringing location-based notifications and voice-optimized routine functionality to its Home devices so it could complete regular custom tasks without you having to pepper it with commands, stuff like this would be ideal for earbuds that are always-listening, something that Google could do much more with than Apple.
Even as features take months to roll out, Google has still shown a degree of nimbleness on the voice assistant front that Apple can’t match in annual WWDC keynotes. While Amazon is just as quick with Alexa, Google Assistant’s deepening integration with Android establishes an arena where they should be the clear champion.
AirPods are clearly the best wireless earbud that an Apple user can own and even with the reduced functionality that still might be true of Android phones. People are building tools to bring iOS-only feature sets to Android and that fact alone should suggest Google take a more serious look at its own hardware and the opportunity that it’s losing out on.
Commentary: Harmony still rules the roost, but that can't last forever. Will the category change drastically or just go away?
Sarah Tew/CNET
I use a $130 Harmony universal remote at home and I tell everyone who has a complex-enough system to do the same. And I've been a happy Harmony camper for more than a decade.
But after spending the last week reviewing Caavo, a $400 universal remote, I've come to view the category in a different way. Yes, Caavo is fatally flawed since it doesn't work with the highest-quality video format available today (HDR), but what it succeeds at is really interesting.
Caavo basically makes a new TV home page for all your entertainment gear, one that's simpler to understand and use than a bunch of different menu systems spread across myriad devices.
When I described the Caavo universal remote to Jeremy Toeman, my CNET colleague and former VP of product at Sling Media, he nodded sagely and said "Yeah, that whole category is ripe for disruption." I agree. Harmony has been doing basically the same thing for years, and while challengers like Caavo and the Ray Super Remote have tried to challenge the king, they've largely failed. So far.
I still recommend Harmony to everyone, but in the next few years, I wouldn't be surprised to see that changing. Here's how.
Caavo wood like to be your universal remote
Disruption
In this scenario a product like Caavo, or its presumed successor -- one that actually supports HDR and costs less, say $200 -- becomes popular among AV enthusiasts sick of the complexity of the various apps, devices and services needed to watch TV and movies today. If you have a bunch of devices and a surround system and a nice TV, that's a small price to pay for a single, simple set of on-screen menus, along with Alexa voice control, to command it all.
Take it a step further and Caavo partners with a real AV receiver maker, say Sony or Denon, and basically takes over their user interface. I also agree with Dan Jacobsen, who replied to a Twitter thread on my review: Caavo would be better off built into a receiver. That single hub/box would handle all the switching, interface and audio goodness required of a big system.
No TV apps is an issue too as that is the only way to get Dolby vision for many. Can't help but thinking this would be better off as a $1000 receiver
In the near future Caavo could sell itself to the receiver makers of the world in the same way Roku appeals to TV makers: We'll handle the software, updates and interface, you stick with the hardware. Roku has been very successful in reclaiming the appeal of Smart TV, providing as much disruption as that category has ever seen. It's no wonder the company is getting into audio.
Roku will soon license audio gear too. The goal? "Simplify." Roku
Irrelevance
If you think about it, a universal remote is just a solution to the problem of home theater gear devices not being "Smart" enough in the first place. And by smart, I also mean working together in a way that makes sense. But it's getting smarter, and more to the point, you need less gear these days to enjoy awesome audio and video.
The less gear you have, the less you need a universal remote, which is why I can see the whole category fading into niche high-end-dom, a.k.a. irrelevance, soon enough.
Samsung TVs can replace a universal remote and control your gear directly. Sarah Tew/CNET
Samsung's Smart TVs basically mimic a universal remote, allowing control of game consoles and cable boxes for example, and also include a solid selection of streaming apps built-in. Add a nice sound bar, maybe one with surround sound speakers and/or Dolby Atmos, and you've got a complete system, easily commanded by a single clicker, that sounds as good as some receiver-based systems.
For more modest systems, Roku's newest streamers, starting with the $50 streaming stick, come with remotes that can control volume and power on a connected TV. If you've cut the cord and don't need a cable box and its requisite remote, you're set. And both Samsung and Roku's systems are cake to set up because, like Caavo, they automatically recognize connected devices and program the remote keys accordingly.
With a power button at the top and volume on the side, Roku's remote is ready to control your TV too. Sarah Tew / CNET
With the increasing popularity of alternatives to cable, including live streaming services like YouTube TV, Sling TV, Hulu with Live TV, PlayStation Vue, DirecTV Now, that cable box remote is becoming less and less necessary for people. You'll still need the TV remote, but with many devices you can turn it on and control volume and mute (and really, what more do you need) with protocols like HDMI-CEC.
Watch out, Harmony
Look, the Harmony Companion remote / hub system is still great, and easily worth the money if you have a lot of stuff to control. The alternatives I mentioned above are all more limited, and flawed in their own ways, in comparison.
Harmony hasn't changed much in five years. Sarah Tew
But recent trends -- a renewed focus on ease-of-use, particularly voice control; a move away from cable boxes and toward streaming; and the increasing popularity of systems like Roku that focus on affordability and function -- could spell the beginning of the end for Logitech's remotes.
The first Harmony hub / remote system came out in 2013, and is pretty much the same today. I'd say it's ripe for at least a new model.
Voice assistants may be the hottest thing since sliced bread when it comes to controlling your $60 wifi light bulbs, but Piccolo is launching out of the latest Y Combinator class with a desire to put a camera in every smart home that can translate your physical motions and gestures into commands.
The company’s “Vision Assistant” product works pretty simply, users place the camera in their house and then once they get it fixed in position, they fire up the app and drag boxes over the internet-connected appliances or TVs or lights. From there, the Piccolo camera is basically looking to record your geometry through what’s called skeletal tracking — don’t worry it’s not using an X-ray or anything — which puts your movement into a model that tracks your body position. From there, the device will know where you’re pointing your hand and can interface with the compatible smart home item. It does more than just turn stuff on and off, they’re experimenting with gestures to fast forward through a Netflix show, change modes on the fan, etc. etc.
Founders Marlon Misra and Neil Raina started studying the technologies behind Piccolo through an interest in self-driving cars. The pair of buddies emerged from taking Udacity’s self-driving program in 2016 with an interest in perceptual engines and their far-flung capabilities, an interest which eventually turned to controlling the smart home with body movements.
The team isn’t aiming to replace your Echo or Google Home, this product would very much be sitting in parallel as a camera that can also control your home. This also means that they have to build support for each smart home product they want to control. The startup is currently in the pilot program phase and they’re hoping to launch via a crowdfunding campaign in the future. (You can join a waitlist on their site to get deets on when exactly)
There are definitely limitations from the existing setup, namely that it’s all pretty 2D at the moment and because of this, things seem like they would get pretty wonky if you had a bunch of smart home products stuffed into your casa. The team said that a hefty chunk of what they’re working with is subject to change and that they’re looking at the possibility of adding something like a depth camera.
One of the company’s biggest hurdles is likely getting people to feel comfortable tossing an internet-connected camera in their homes, but while people are skeptical of Google and Amazon because they have a pronounced interest to tailor ads as tightly as possible, the founders tell me they feel like they may have an advantage simply because they are a scrappy upstart that doesn’t have the scale or diverging interests of their competitors.
Other like Leap Motion have attempted (time and time again) to get hand movement controls for tech products to take off. Where Piccolo says its advantage is, is that their technology works from a further distance so you won’t need one of these things attached to every appliance in your home. In an effort to cut down on false positives, the team is currently leading users to raise their hand straight up and then point straight to the object. This is ultimately not that much lower-effort than telling Alexa to kill the lights, but the team’s ultimate ambitions are focused on getting the tracking tight enough that they can tell what you want from minor hand movements.
It’s early days but as computer vision advances bring new functionality to things like smart security cameras, there’s reason to see that the indoor camera could be the key to finding the full potential of the smart home assistant as well.
