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20,000 Devices Support Amazon’s Alexa

Amazon’s famous artificial intelligence (A I) platform has become a force in the consumer market. At last week’s IFA consumer electronics conference in Berlin, Amazon announced that its Alexa app now works with more than 20,000 devices. This is an impressive advance, given that the firm said only last January that Alexa worked with 4,000 devices. A fivefold increase in eight months is almost unheard of for any product.

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Daniel Rausch, an Amazon executive, said, “Alexa has sung Happy Birthday millions of times to customers, and she’s told over 100 million jokes.”

20,000 Devices = Fivefold Increase in Eight Months

Rausch confirmed that Alexa works with more than 20,000 devices made by 3,500 manufacturers.

Amazon manufactures its own Alexa devices, including the Echo smart speakers,  Fire TV. and Fire tablets. But the company has been trying trying to get the app into as multiple third-party devices.

What is Alexa?

Alexa is an artificial intelligence, or machine learning, app. It works in phones, speakers, TV sets, thermostats, and even cars. At this year’s IFA conference, Netgear and Huawei announced that the app would be in their home routers. Amazon said it wants to bring the app into hotels and offices.

Alexa now has more than 50,000 skills. Hundreds of thousands of developers in 180 countries work with it. Many more are coming.

Rausch is especially proud of Alexa’s voice control functions. “It turned out that your smart phone is actually a pretty terrible remote control for your house,” he said. “You don’t want to fish around in your pocket, open applications, unlock your phone to control the device right in front of you. Voice has truly unlocked the smart home. That’s because its actually simpler.”

“You won’t need a manual”, Rausch said, “becasue our devices learn about you, not the other way around.”

What are Amazon’s competitors doing?

Alexa is not alone in its market. It competes with Apple’s Siri, Google’s Home Assistant, and Microsoft’s Cortana. Alexa is by far the most successful, though. Other providers are scrambling to replicate its market penetration, and likely will take years to catch up. Still, they are moving energetically to get their apps into laptops, phones, appliances- even vehicles.

Amazon seems unworried about its competitors. Its Echo smart speaker leads the voice assistant market by a wide margin. And Rausch says his company “has barely scratched the surface” of what voice control can do.

Getting into 20,000 devices in four years is an impressive feat. But for Amazon, evidently, it’s just the beginning.

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Amazon Fire TV Developing Networked DVR

Amazon wants you to be able to record its live video programming. To that end, according to Bloomberg News, the web retailer and streaming video service is hard at work developing a networked DVR. Bloomberg says Amazon has not revealed a release date for the DVR.

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A networked DVR is one held in the provider’s central location, not in the consumer’s home. It records live content in real time. The consumer can view the recorded content at will, unbound by TV network broadcast schedules.

Amazon’s Lab 126, which built the Fire TV and Echo devices, is working on the new DVR. Staff for Lab 126 have dubbed the new DVR project ‘Frank’.

‘Frank’ will incorporate the same wireless technology that connects its Echo voice control devices to Fire TV boxes.

The device, according to Bloomberg, could stream recorded video to mobile tablets and phones. Existing Fire TV devices on the customer’s home network will support it. Amazon’s new DVR will be connected through the home WiFi network. It will not plug into a TV.

A conventional DVR (TiVo, Channel Master, etc.) usually plugs into a TV set, and features its own user interface. A networked DVR, by contrast, doesn’t have to be plugged into a TV.  It can be placed anywhere in the home, and can stream recorded content to any TV, streaming stick, or mobile device. In most cases, networked DVRs don’t have their own HDMI ports.

Amazon Prime Video is a subscription service, for which the customer pays monthly or annual fees. Beside the video service, customers get free or discounted shipping on goods ordered through Amazon. The video service is meant to compete with Netflix and Hulu.

 

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2018: What to Expect in TV Displays

In the last decade, we’ve seen dramatic improvements in TV screens. HD has given way to 4K, the first HDR screens are on the market, and OLED and QLED displays have become practical. We don’t expect innovation in screen technology to come to a halt, but it won’t be moving at the blistering pace we’ve seen lately. So what will we find in video displays in 2018?

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Incrementalism is likely to be the dominant theme in video display tech this year. Most developments will merely build on radical technical leaps of the past, very few being completely new to the consumer market.

Still, some interesting prospects are on the near horizon. Here are a few of the most important changes in video equipment that we will see in 2018:

 HDMI 2.1

How often do you think about the cables connecting your TV set? They don’t get much respect. They can be critical, though, for the quality of your TV sound and picture.

The current HDMI 2.1 specs were published only in November 2017. This obviously leaves an excruciatingly tight time frame for manufacture of 2018-model TV sets or other devices that will comply with the new standard. Almost no HDMI 2.1-compliant sets, therefore, will be on the market until late in the year.

For now, you don’t need to worry about their absence. The HDMI 2.1 spec is almost outrageously future-proofed. Some of its capabilities, including 8K resolution and much higher frame rates, won’t be available in consumer TV for several years. A TV set you buy this year can handle the best available content for several years.

Emissive Quantum Dots

Quantum Dot LED (QLED) TV have gotten a lot of press in the last two years. QLED sets have shown great promise. They can’t yet match the overall picture quality of OLED, though, lagging in refresh rates and contrast.

2018 may be the year QLED catches up. Some experts are placing their bets on emissive quantum dots (EQD). EQD sets have been hyped as the “true QLED” that video buffs have awaited eagerly for years.

With EQD, miniscule quantum dots actually emit light instead of merely enhancing LCD backlight. They could also match or surpass OLED’s “infinite” contrast ratio, with far lower power consumption, and with a much wider and more intense color gamut.

4K & HDR Everywhere

You’ll see many 4k and HDR sets this year. Almost every manufacturer is producing models that can handle both specs.

Both formats were developed at least two years ago, but are difficult to build into TV screens. Also, very little programming has been available in either format, because they require new cameras and editing tools.

That will change in the new year. Almost all new display screenss will be compatible with both formats, and studios are beginning to produce a wide array of video content for them.

Local Dimming

Local dimming is independent brightening or dimming of different areas of the screen. The more expensive TV sets released in 2018 will feature it.

Micro LED

Samsung wants to challenge the technical leadership of OLED.  For this purpose, it’s expected to offer a Micro LED display.

In concept, the technology far older than you’d guess. Micro LED was invented seventeen years ago, and Sony demonstrated a working model in 2012. Techniques for its manufacture were extremely expensive, though, so it wasn’t suited for the consumer market.

Refined manufacturing techniques, enabling relatively cheap bulk production, may finally bring Micro LED to us in 2018.

Micro LED screens feature extremely small diodes, each emitting its own light, eliminating need for an LCD backlight. Each diode can be switched on or off separatelyly, enabling OLED-like contrast and rapid refresh rates.

Samsung is expected to demonstrate a 150-inch Micro LED model at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, and to release smaller consumer versions later. The latter may be available for purchase by the end of the year.

Voice Control

Voice control is hardly new. Voice-activated video screens and remote controls have been on the market for years. Early versions were buggy, though, and they often compromised user privacy.

For 2018, voice control and interactive displays will be much more reliable. One of the most important developments on this front is manufacturer collaboration with Amazon and Google. Video displays will be synced with Alexa and Google Home systems.

 

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