September 21, 2018 • 8 mins
Amazon took the wraps off of 14 new Alexa powered devices including a new Echo for you car, a microwave and a DVR that might be the missing link to a well-balanced cord cutting lifestyle.More information on all of the products:http://richontech.tv/2018/09/amazon/amazon-announces-14-alexa-powered-devices-including-a-microwave/Follow Rich on Social Media:Facebook: http://facebook.com/RichOnTechTwitter: http://twitter.com/richdemuroInstagram: http://instagram.com/richontech Easy ways to listen on your phone or smart speaker:"Hey Google, Play the Rich on Tech Podcast""Hey Siri, Play the Rich on Tech Podcast""Alexa, Enable the Rich on Tech Flash Briefing"
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Fourteen new Alexa powered devices from Amazon.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
What's going on? I'm Richdmiro, this is rich on tech. Okay,
so I.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Wasn't invited to Amazon's big surprise event in Seattle, but
I won't hold that against the company. They took reporters
on a wild ride announcing over seventy new devices, features,
and developer tools across Alexa, Echo, and fireTV. It's very
clear Amazon has huge plans for Alexa and wants it
to power just about every aspect of our everyday lives.
(00:32):
And as Amazon builds its portfolio, the missing piece might
just be another smartphone. So let's go through some of
the most notable products that they launched, starting with the
Echo lineup.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
It is a lot. First off, you've got the Echo Dot.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
It now comes wrapped in fabric and it has a
louder speaker with better sound. The price stays the same
at fifty dollars. That launches October eleventh. The Echo Plus
is their top of the line Echo speaker. This has
a new rounder design. It's also wrapped in fabric. It
also functions as a smart home hub. The speaker inside
the Echo Plus is also upgraded. That will sell for
(01:04):
one hundred and fifty dollars. It is also available on
October eleventh. The Echo Show is sort of a mini
TV slash tablet slash show screen slash video conferencing tool. Now, personally,
I use an iPad on my kitchen counter. I think
this would be a great replacement for that, but I
don't really need some extra features that this offers.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
This is the second generation of the device.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Amazon upgraded the design added a better speaker, plus it
also has a larger.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Ten inch HD display.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
They're also adding Skype to the options for video calling,
which is really cool because you're no longer limited to
Amazon's proprietary option and pretty much anyone with Skype will
be able to talk to you on the other end.
That's pretty big. This sells for two hundred and thirty dollars.
It's also available on October eleventh. There's a new thing
called Echo Auto. This brings Alexa into your car, sort
of a stopgap until more automakers jump on board with
(01:54):
Alexa built into their cars, or at least the head units.
This is a small device that connects to your car
via Blue or the AUX input. It has eight microphone
so Amazon says it will hear your commands above all
the road noise and the AC blasting. The device will
be fifty dollars when it officially launches, but right now
you can request an invitation to buy one.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
For just twenty five dollars. All right. From here things
get pretty interesting.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Amazon launched a bunch of Echo companion devices think Alexa.
In just about every aspect of your house. There is
a wall clock which connects to Echo devices. It looks
like your typical analog wall clock, but it helps you
visualize timers that you set with Alexa. And I kind
of like the idea of this because I regularly set
timers for my kids for reading, watching TV, or other things,
(02:38):
and I like the idea that they can glance up
and kind of see visually how much time is left.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
That is thirty dollars.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Then there's a whole bunch of Echo accessories for your
home theater setup. There's an input that lets you add
Alexa to any speaker for thirty five dollars, a sub
for more base when you play TV or music on
your Echo devices that's one hundred and thirty dollars. Then
there's an Echo link which connects to your stereo system
and allows you to feed your streaming music in high
quality format to your existing receiver.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
That's two hundred dollars.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
And there's even an EchoLink amp which has its own
power and it works to pass music to any pair
of speakers for three hundred dollars. I wonder what Sonos
is thinking right now, because the only thing Amazon did
not reveal was a Alexa powered soundbar for your TV.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Maybe that's next.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
As if all that's not enough, Amazon also announced in
Amazon Basics microwave.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
This is a sixty dollars microwave that.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Doesn't necessarily have Alexa built in, but it does work
with a nearby echo to take commands for cooking food,
so you can say things like reheat coffee or microwave
frozen vegetables. And I love the idea of this and
suddenly wish my microwave was not built into my kitchen setup.
This is kind of a no brainer purchase for the
price at just sixty bucks. And the best part is
(03:50):
I love microwave popcorn. By the way, I love popcorn
in general. You can finally use the popcorn button on
your microwave, even though every bag of popcorn you ever
buy says the first rule of Popcorn Club is.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Don't ever use the popcorn button.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
The Amazon microwave is smart enough to ask you the
brand of your popcorn and the size of the.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Bag so that it pops perfectly every time.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
There's also a one touch popcorn replenishment button. Oh my gosh,
this was built for people that love popcorn. The Amazon
Basics Microwave is available on November fourteenth. Finally, there's now
an Amazon smart plug that you control with Alexa.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
These are fantastic.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
I have a bunch of other brands of these things
around my house and I find them really useful, especially
for controlling holiday lights the Christmas tree and little tabletop
lamps I have around the house that turn on and
off at sunrise and sunset. And sure there are lots
of these from various brands, but Amazon offering their own
smart plug is really a smart idea because you know
it's gonna easily work with Alexa.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
And the quality is going to be there.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
And Amazon smart plug is twenty five dollars, which is
about the average going price from other competitors. Usually they're
around thirty five dollars. I would have liked to see
this offered at ten or fifteen dollars, but perhaps what will
happen when Amazon sells them as a bundle or puts
them on sale. The smart plug is available October eleventh
as well. But wait, there's more, including a new feature
(05:09):
that lets Alexa control basic functionality of your smart home
devices even if her Internet connection goes out.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Which is kind of cool.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
But I'm going to focus on just one more interesting
addition to the lineup, which is a new fireTV DVR.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
It's called the fireTV Recast and this.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Is sort of the missing link between what we were
used to, which was a DVR with every channel imaginable,
and the new age of cord cutting and streaming everything
through a box like fireTV. Now. I still haven't made
up my mind whether this Recast TV is brilliant or
too late to be useful, But here's what it is.
It's a simple little box that you set up pretty
much anywhere in your house where you can put up
(05:45):
an antenna and get the best reception for over the
air channels. Then it goes to work recording your favorite
shows and saving them on its internal hard drive. You
can then view your shows on an Amazon fireTV, a
tablet or an IOA or Android device. It doesn't sound
like there's support for Apple TV, Roku or Chromecast out
of the gate, but I could definitely see that being
(06:07):
added down the line. Of course, you can easily browse
through your recordings, see what's currently live and more on
a fire TV connected to your TV set. What's also
cool about this is that you can finally get and
record all of your local channels for free, and for
a lot of folks, that, along with the Netflix subscription,
will be pretty much all they need. And you also
have Amazon Prime Video of course, it's kind of like
(06:28):
a modern TVO. But the other great thing is that
this is a one time purchase. There are no ongoing
monthly fees, and you can even choose shows from an
on screen guide to record, or you can use your
voice with Alexa to tune in channels, shows or even
set up recordings.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
I'm kind of loving this, especially since the channel I
work for, which is KTLA and Los Angeles, isn't on
any streaming service just yet, and of course you can
easily grab the channel over the air, so now I
can pipe our programming right onto my TV screen and
into my devices. I really hope Amazon adds the ability
to download shows that you record on your recast to
(07:06):
our devices. That would really be the missing link here.
The fire TV recast comes in two models. A two
tuner model, which is five hundred gigabytes, can record two
shows at once and hold up to seventy five hours
of programming.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
That's two hundred and thirty dollars.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Then there's also a four tuner model that can record
a whopping four shows at once that holds up to
one hundred and fifty hours of HD shows and that's
two hundred and eighty dollars.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
This is kind of the better buy, but you will
be able to add.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
An external hard drive to either of these systems down
the road. The Recast TV is shipping November fourteenth. You
better believe I'll be buying one, and I don't think
it can recapture the excitement of my first TVO, which
was back in two thousand. I invited all my friends
over I put on Survivor back when it was big,
and I will never forget watching the look on their
faces as I paused live TV for the very first time.
(07:54):
They were all baffled as to what I just did.
That was a pretty cool memory. Of course, we're all
pretty used to pausing live TV at this point. There
you have it, Amazon Alexa overload. It is full on
game on between Amazon, Google, and Apple for smart assistant dominance,
in the.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Home, car, and everywhere in between.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Apple and Google might have had a head start on phones,
but Amazon is certainly making a big play for everywhere else.
Thanks so much for listening to the podcast and if
you enjoy this. If you enjoy listening to this, please
take a screenshot on your phone and share it on
social media with your friends, and please remember to tag
me so I can share in the love and say thanks.
Just a quick programming note, I will be filling in
(08:32):
for Leo Laporte on his radio show this weekend September
twenty second and twenty third. You can listen on KFI
AM six forty in Los Angeles from eleven am to
two pm, or you can find a station near you
just go to tech guy labs dot com.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Thanks so much for listening. I'm Rich Damiro I'll talk
to you real soon.
Fourteen new Alexa powered devices from Amazon.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
What's going on? I'm Richdmiro, this is rich on tech. Okay,
so I.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Wasn't invited to Amazon's big surprise event in Seattle, but
I won't hold that against the company. They took reporters
on a wild ride announcing over seventy new devices, features,
and developer tools across Alexa, Echo, and fireTV. It's very
clear Amazon has huge plans for Alexa and wants it
to power just about every aspect of our everyday lives.
(00:32):
And as Amazon builds its portfolio, the missing piece might
just be another smartphone. So let's go through some of
the most notable products that they launched, starting with the
Echo lineup.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
It is a lot. First off, you've got the Echo Dot.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
It now comes wrapped in fabric and it has a
louder speaker with better sound. The price stays the same
at fifty dollars. That launches October eleventh. The Echo Plus
is their top of the line Echo speaker. This has
a new rounder design. It's also wrapped in fabric. It
also functions as a smart home hub. The speaker inside
the Echo Plus is also upgraded. That will sell for
(01:04):
one hundred and fifty dollars. It is also available on
October eleventh. The Echo Show is sort of a mini
TV slash tablet slash show screen slash video conferencing tool. Now, personally,
I use an iPad on my kitchen counter. I think
this would be a great replacement for that, but I
don't really need some extra features that this offers.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
This is the second generation of the device.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Amazon upgraded the design added a better speaker, plus it
also has a larger.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Ten inch HD display.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
They're also adding Skype to the options for video calling,
which is really cool because you're no longer limited to
Amazon's proprietary option and pretty much anyone with Skype will
be able to talk to you on the other end.
That's pretty big. This sells for two hundred and thirty dollars.
It's also available on October eleventh. There's a new thing
called Echo Auto. This brings Alexa into your car, sort
of a stopgap until more automakers jump on board with
(01:54):
Alexa built into their cars, or at least the head units.
This is a small device that connects to your car
via Blue or the AUX input. It has eight microphone
so Amazon says it will hear your commands above all
the road noise and the AC blasting. The device will
be fifty dollars when it officially launches, but right now
you can request an invitation to buy one.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
For just twenty five dollars. All right. From here things
get pretty interesting.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Amazon launched a bunch of Echo companion devices think Alexa.
In just about every aspect of your house. There is
a wall clock which connects to Echo devices. It looks
like your typical analog wall clock, but it helps you
visualize timers that you set with Alexa. And I kind
of like the idea of this because I regularly set
timers for my kids for reading, watching TV, or other things,
(02:38):
and I like the idea that they can glance up
and kind of see visually how much time is left.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
That is thirty dollars.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Then there's a whole bunch of Echo accessories for your
home theater setup. There's an input that lets you add
Alexa to any speaker for thirty five dollars, a sub
for more base when you play TV or music on
your Echo devices that's one hundred and thirty dollars. Then
there's an Echo link which connects to your stereo system
and allows you to feed your streaming music in high
quality format to your existing receiver.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
That's two hundred dollars.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
And there's even an EchoLink amp which has its own
power and it works to pass music to any pair
of speakers for three hundred dollars. I wonder what Sonos
is thinking right now, because the only thing Amazon did
not reveal was a Alexa powered soundbar for your TV.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Maybe that's next.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
As if all that's not enough, Amazon also announced in
Amazon Basics microwave.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
This is a sixty dollars microwave that.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Doesn't necessarily have Alexa built in, but it does work
with a nearby echo to take commands for cooking food,
so you can say things like reheat coffee or microwave
frozen vegetables. And I love the idea of this and
suddenly wish my microwave was not built into my kitchen setup.
This is kind of a no brainer purchase for the
price at just sixty bucks. And the best part is
(03:50):
I love microwave popcorn. By the way, I love popcorn
in general. You can finally use the popcorn button on
your microwave, even though every bag of popcorn you ever
buy says the first rule of Popcorn Club is.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Don't ever use the popcorn button.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
The Amazon microwave is smart enough to ask you the
brand of your popcorn and the size of the.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Bag so that it pops perfectly every time.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
There's also a one touch popcorn replenishment button. Oh my gosh,
this was built for people that love popcorn. The Amazon
Basics Microwave is available on November fourteenth. Finally, there's now
an Amazon smart plug that you control with Alexa.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
These are fantastic.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
I have a bunch of other brands of these things
around my house and I find them really useful, especially
for controlling holiday lights the Christmas tree and little tabletop
lamps I have around the house that turn on and
off at sunrise and sunset. And sure there are lots
of these from various brands, but Amazon offering their own
smart plug is really a smart idea because you know
it's gonna easily work with Alexa.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
And the quality is going to be there.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
And Amazon smart plug is twenty five dollars, which is
about the average going price from other competitors. Usually they're
around thirty five dollars. I would have liked to see
this offered at ten or fifteen dollars, but perhaps what will
happen when Amazon sells them as a bundle or puts
them on sale. The smart plug is available October eleventh
as well. But wait, there's more, including a new feature
(05:09):
that lets Alexa control basic functionality of your smart home
devices even if her Internet connection goes out.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Which is kind of cool.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
But I'm going to focus on just one more interesting
addition to the lineup, which is a new fireTV DVR.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
It's called the fireTV Recast and this.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Is sort of the missing link between what we were
used to, which was a DVR with every channel imaginable,
and the new age of cord cutting and streaming everything
through a box like fireTV. Now. I still haven't made
up my mind whether this Recast TV is brilliant or
too late to be useful, But here's what it is.
It's a simple little box that you set up pretty
much anywhere in your house where you can put up
(05:45):
an antenna and get the best reception for over the
air channels. Then it goes to work recording your favorite
shows and saving them on its internal hard drive. You
can then view your shows on an Amazon fireTV, a
tablet or an IOA or Android device. It doesn't sound
like there's support for Apple TV, Roku or Chromecast out
of the gate, but I could definitely see that being
(06:07):
added down the line. Of course, you can easily browse
through your recordings, see what's currently live and more on
a fire TV connected to your TV set. What's also
cool about this is that you can finally get and
record all of your local channels for free, and for
a lot of folks, that, along with the Netflix subscription,
will be pretty much all they need. And you also
have Amazon Prime Video of course, it's kind of like
(06:28):
a modern TVO. But the other great thing is that
this is a one time purchase. There are no ongoing
monthly fees, and you can even choose shows from an
on screen guide to record, or you can use your
voice with Alexa to tune in channels, shows or even
set up recordings.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
I'm kind of loving this, especially since the channel I
work for, which is KTLA and Los Angeles, isn't on
any streaming service just yet, and of course you can
easily grab the channel over the air, so now I
can pipe our programming right onto my TV screen and
into my devices. I really hope Amazon adds the ability
to download shows that you record on your recast to
(07:06):
our devices. That would really be the missing link here.
The fire TV recast comes in two models. A two
tuner model, which is five hundred gigabytes, can record two
shows at once and hold up to seventy five hours
of programming.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
That's two hundred and thirty dollars.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Then there's also a four tuner model that can record
a whopping four shows at once that holds up to
one hundred and fifty hours of HD shows and that's
two hundred and eighty dollars.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
This is kind of the better buy, but you will
be able to add.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
An external hard drive to either of these systems down
the road. The Recast TV is shipping November fourteenth. You
better believe I'll be buying one, and I don't think
it can recapture the excitement of my first TVO, which
was back in two thousand. I invited all my friends
over I put on Survivor back when it was big,
and I will never forget watching the look on their
faces as I paused live TV for the very first time.
(07:54):
They were all baffled as to what I just did.
That was a pretty cool memory. Of course, we're all
pretty used to pausing live TV at this point. There
you have it, Amazon Alexa overload. It is full on
game on between Amazon, Google, and Apple for smart assistant dominance,
in the.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Home, car, and everywhere in between.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Apple and Google might have had a head start on phones,
but Amazon is certainly making a big play for everywhere else.
Thanks so much for listening to the podcast and if
you enjoy this. If you enjoy listening to this, please
take a screenshot on your phone and share it on
social media with your friends, and please remember to tag
me so I can share in the love and say thanks.
Just a quick programming note, I will be filling in
(08:32):
for Leo Laporte on his radio show this weekend September
twenty second and twenty third. You can listen on KFI
AM six forty in Los Angeles from eleven am to
two pm, or you can find a station near you
just go to tech guy labs dot com.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Thanks so much for listening. I'm Rich Damiro I'll talk
to you real soon.
Host
Rich DeMuro
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