Voice Search Capability Added To Amazon Fire TV And Fire TV Stick

[Julio Urquidi]

Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick customers will soon be able to use voice commands to search for content from a variety of over 75 apps and channels, including Netflix and HBO Go. The new voice feature is enabled automatically via the Fire TV devices’ most recent over-the-air update. The search feature also presents customers with viewing options if a searched show is available on multiple services or viewing formats (rent, buy, stream, or purchase).

Other voice related Fire TV updates include Amazon Video commands given through the Alexa app. Phrases like “rewind 30 seconds”, “skip ahead 2 minutes”, “next”, and “give me my sports update” will help navigate and present content to Amazon customers.

In its announcement, Amazon also said that voice search for HBO’s other streaming service, HBO Now, is “coming soon”.

 

[System Error Message]

voice searching, the scottish and probably the rest of the UK will absolutely hate it.

 

[sfx2000]

voice searching, the scottish and probably the rest of the UK will absolutely hate it.

speaker independent voice recognition is not an easy problem to solve - and Scottish is one of the big challenges - forget whether it was google or amazon that recently announced a program where they would pay people for voice samples in Scotland as the current sampling is not sufficient...

I have a heck of a time with siri - growing up in the very far northern prairie country... the local accent up there is pretty close to the inland Canadian accents, which is a bit unique - ask someone from Toronto or Montreal (or Vancouver) about folks from the Prairie Provinces, they know... western North Dakota, Eastern Montana, and the lower part of Saskatchewan - we all share the same characteristics - and due to low population density, the sample size is smaller than most - accent and phrases - for me, it's tempered a bit having lived in Southern California for the last 25 years, but still..

I can only imagine how tough it must be for the Welsh with VR - that's gotta be tough one to work...