Gadgetory

welcome to the 359 I'm Joni Saltzman David Katz Meyer after Amazon first launched its original echo smart speaker in 2014 it was a hit and it ushered in a new era of voice computing but Amazon has always kept its speakers in a sweet spot the low end but a new report this week says Amazon may release a high-end amp receiver and subwoofer David can Amazon do high-end audio I mean I think Amazon's opportunity is not necessarily high-end like ok so it's it's an amplifier it's a AV receiver you can't build one of those things for 99 bucks I mean you can i mean maybe somebody has but you know if amazon is gonna do this product right you know it's gonna have hdmi switching it's gonna be able to amplify 5.1 speakers it's gonna have the ability to be the hub of your you know entertainment system not just like a soundbar something like that so I think it's gonna be like $2.99 for an AV receiver with Alexa built-in that would be a pretty sweet spot you know again this is all conjecture we wrote an article kind of kind of riffing on this stuff another cool thing I think would be if they integrated the fire TV cube yeah which was a product that I really liked it's basically a little Alexa speaker that can control all your a/v gear by using infrared emitters and and IR codes and all this stuff so it's kind of like the glorified util so remote you can talk to build that into the AV receiver and now you're talking you have streaming you have all of this you know speaker control amplification TV interfacing built-in that's kind of my dream really gonna do well is that the idea that if they have this sort of central node for your living room then Amazon can sort of be your living room is that the idea by having something like that and and they've gone down this road pretty far already by saying you know Alexa turn on my TV and like it really feels really cool like I use at home for example like kids are watching TV and they refuse to turn it off or they can't find the remote I'm like Alexa you know take care of this problem for me the TV turns off and the kids like oh and I have to mute it of course cuz then they'll go like sigh turn on the TV but Alexa ruining children's happiness everywhere absolutely all right TV OS so apple also released this week an updated version of its TV OS it's the operating system that runs its popular Apple TVs so what's what's the big what are the big changes so we've been getting we got new iPhones we got an Apple watch we didn't get a new Apple TV sorry guys no Apple TV 8k but you know there is some new software out there it's in this he makes a pretty minor update they added Dolby Atmos which is the headline feature here so that's Dolby's best sound thing it actually creates height channels so there's extra channels more speakers and you know again it requires a pretty high-end system to take full advantage of so and also the correct content so of course Apple's there to save the day with iTunes and Atmos you know they're actually promising the largest library of films that have Atmos available immediately which is cool and they'll actually upgrade your existing Dolby Digital only stuff to for free so you don't need to pay extra to get that you know high resolution audio so it's cool for high-end dudes otherwise is kind of minor the other thing is that they also have the ability to be controlled by third-party remotes so that's a new feature and you can picture a Logitech Harmony one of these remote control companies coming in with a voice operated remote you know that does Siri which would be pretty cool you know if they want to play ball together so that's a future thing no no announcements yet but that's one of the things that might be enabled by this do you think that an update like this does it really matter like if you're not getting a new box does this update really do much for your the guy with you know height channels and you're doing backflips to be able to finally watch you know whatever film in in at most no it's it's it's a small update but there are things are some other small little tweaks like zero sign-on is that truth came in this one yeah so zero sign-on is the if you're a charter subscriber you can immediately get all of your TV apps turned on you know without having to sign in so that's pretty cool there's some other new features but yeah that's that's it's it's again it's pretty small alright thank you that's it for us I'm Joni Salzmann David Katz Meyer thanks for listening you know we did we hit that four minutes all right thanks everybody for joining us for the recording of the audio podcast that we'll publish later today you can get links to subscribe to that in the description down below right now it's time for me to go digging through the cesspool that is the chat I kid we love you you send in great comments and questions and we keep the conversation going first up right out the gate James fever wants to ask will it cost this of course referring to the alleged new Amazon smart I don't want it to say the trigger word Amazon smart speaker high-end audio model with a cost as much as the Apple home pod I sure as hell hope not it's expensive to build one of these yeah and the kind of the the while the wild card here is that Amazon can have a loss leader like they can price it less than they make it for yeah they've done that before in other products what do you think about it yeah I think again their opportunity is to come in lower than the denims and the Sony's of the world and really kind of you know $2.99 is a very cheap baby receiver could as vibrant one and and a bunch of HDMI inputs and and and all the stuff you'd expect any of you receiver plus Alexa maybe they'll go a little bit higher than that I can't see them really building something decent for lower than that there's also the amp which isn't really touch on in the podcast the any amplifier basically to me means like a two channel thing so so knows which is in this game as well those guys just released their own amp which they've had for years and it's always been really expensive and it's still 600 bucks and so if Amazon come in and undercut that again a bureau speaker a little box that you entertainment guys love and the has Alexa and allows you to do all the fun stuff that you know it already does sorry guys a lax a as we say home or the a word The Scarlet Letter would you say is that any way that you know that's a cool product and there's a subwoofer what's the subwoofer from Amazon gonna be it's like a thing that talks really deep right like I can't do that my Wi-Fi is disconnected like I don't know but yes it's subwoofer so yeah who knows and I'm not familiar with this the market for you like what kind of markets is Amazon really have to look towards what well I'll tell you the general trend we'd review a lot of home audio products has seen that the general trend has been away from AV receivers and separate boxes toward speakers not necessarily you know echo speakers the denying dollar price point but integrated sound bars are really the thing right so and of course there's already Alexa enabled sound bars out there that we mentioned Sonos they have one at 399 or the Sonos beam and then there's also cheaper product called the pulk command bar which is a big sound bar made by paul clone an audio brand and it has like a dot like kind of embedded in the middle of it you know it's a weird you know Franken product but that's another thing that you can talk to that gives you good audio you know so it's it's a it's a small market I think I would say for the amp and the receiver yeah unless they do something really cool which who knows Amazon they can yeah yeah we have a lot of money to throw out do you have other questions Oh plenty yeah from James is Amazon making or Amazon is supposed to be making eight plus voice assistant integrated products by the end of 2018 is this one of them or is this a complete red herring here yes so you're talking about that leak the CIC report and eight-plus was in there among the products that you know I don't care as much about but other people do is a microwave yeah with Alexa and Rach our gadget they said specified car gadget yeah so we'll see and we do expect we've already written extensively about this but we do expect a new Amazon show echo show which is their thing with it with us with a screen on it yeah and what else new dot I think they have so many products I mean there's already eleven Alexa powered gadgets period and yeah and the line um so all I have to do I mean like that gives them plenty of opportunity to update one of them well does it stick that's kind of what it feels like a receiver a subwoofer and a microwave and a car gadget right right just might as well just you know what's next you know my shoes have a Lexington man walk don't trip don't trip you trip though you have the Apple watch should be like oh I'm tripping oh that's right Falls and it tells you which is a very good feature I think you know for safety for our older listeners if you fall over and you know you have an Apple watch series 4 on it will alert the authorities if there's a long period of time when you're you know not responsive so that's actually pretty pretty good for I think I think that's great but I will admit that my knee-jerk reaction when I saw is like do I really need a device to tell me if I fell I'm pretty aware that I fell you will in a couple years BVG going back on to what we were talking about with Amazon mark dybul wants us to expand and wonders if Amazon and their voice assistant is going to be starting to make a stronger move is this the next step for them is to move into the automotive industry mmm I mean the automotive industry is interesting especially with audio because the vast majority of listening especially traditionally has always been in the car I mean that's like and then because car replacement cycles are so wide because the development cycle of a car is so much longer than a smaller device it's been one of those sort of very difficult areas to break through with technology also you know like it's how long has it taken to get connectivity in cars well I think that's really the issue is you know when you're driving around your car you don't necessarily have perfect reception for Wi-Fi which a you know an Alexa requires and you can't even have your home Wi-Fi go down and have it work so you know once you get past that hurdle of you know 4G in the car then you know you're in a really good spot and I think that is you know one of the more promising products that has a really use case I mean there are ways to get Alexa in the car today but for Amazon to come forward and say you know here's how we're really putting this thing in a gadget with a cigarette lighter adapter or whatever and and and maybe some kind of cellular connection that would be pretty cool yeah quickly to the Prime mobile Louis Furman points out that Bo's already came out with a smart speaker that has a voice assistant in it that's opposed 500 James and Matthew were both wondering if Amazon is going to try to develop their own sound bar mmm yeah so you know like everybody says they're a crap-ton metric crap-ton of a speaker partners out there for Alexa and one of the things sorry for the scarf or a so once Amazon you know it gets these things they usually start with their third party you know developers and then they progress to yeah hey we're gonna make this ourselves and sometimes if you're a Bose or a so knows you're like me I wish you wouldn't do that Amazon but in Amazon comes out with a thing that's cheaper and just as good you know that sells massive amounts cuz they put it on the front of their webpage so maybe that's gonna happen with these smart speakers if you're a Bose or a Sonos you might not have as much to worry about if you're a pulk and it's somebody that's a little lesser known brand that doesn't charge as much you're in a different market then maybe you're kind of quaking in your boots about what's gonna happen here but we'll see I mean again I think there's room for a lot of this stuff people's appetite for you know far-field smart stuff in their home seems to be you know pretty ravenous right now so yeah we'll see you know ya could amazon's unnamed voice assistant ever workout 4G or 5g mmm yeah surprised I haven't seemed age that it wasn't already that that seems like 101 kind of thing yeah I again with the gun back the car that's the best use case I mean it there's no point in building special if you're Amazon and you're building to a price point putting that in in the home but yeah if you're talking about something portable you know the the tap speaker comes to mind which is basically a portable little guy that you can bring out to your backyard if you had enough Wi-Fi and get that to work so you know I think that's again it cost money to put a cellar antenna in it costs even more to pay right you know the fee or whatever it is and you know to get that that activated so yeah absolutely technically possible and I wouldn't be surprised if you know at some point Amazon came out with that Timothy do says cats why is there no love for the DTS ma HD I have no idea what you're talking about oh he's is that DT is that master audio I don't know what he's talking about I literally don't maybe you could expand a little bit but it is the master audio okay the lossless codec from DTS yeah yeah that's been out for a while um I loved it as much as any other 5.1 channel surround sound lossless codec but yeah when when you probably talked about Apple TV and the fact that has Atmos DTS X is their atmospheric equivalent from what I understand that doesn't really stream all that well so DTS X is the high-end equivalent of Dolby Atmos form DTS which is Dolby's main competitor in the surround sound space for codecs and DTS X is available on 4k blu-rays right now but I haven't heard of it being available to stream from anybody maybe correct me if I'm wrong so you know apples obviously chasing the thing that is the most important in the marketplace right now which is unquestionably Atmos DTS X has a late start on that so maybe they'll catch up and you can always add another audio codec with software maybe so what does the industry response going to be to Amazon releasing higher-end speakers you think Google's gonna jump back into the fray how hard is Apple going to like slam on their quality of the home home home pod and their whole audio fidelity well I'm surprised if Apple went in the direction of like an amp in a receiver yeah because they're they're all about their thing is making it all in one and making it easy and making it beautiful and the idea of these products is that you are an aficionado you can cobble together exactly what you want and not what Apple tells you is the best way to have it combined yeah you can buy on speakers and write and and and that's a pain in the butt I mean you think it's hard to wire you know a sound bar imagine 5.1 speakers with their double wires going across your room and it's a nightmare no it's same same thing especially with Google like they have the googled max which is their equivalent of the home pod it's a $400 you know smart speaker you know we haven't really heard of Amazon going that way and and to understand the home pod in the max are relatively disappointing in terms of you know market penetration and sales they you know those are high-end things and you know Apple at least has a bunch of enthusiasts they're willing to pay whatever Google can't really say that you know so an Amazon even less so so I'd be surprised if Amazon came out with a max style 303 and $50 speaker yeah just a couple of minutes left here's one from Josh Buddha who is this actually going to be for I thought most people already just connecting their echoes into high-end speaker systems that's what I do at home great question so yeah we didn't talk about this but you can already connect your dot with it even with an audio output but you know there's ways to interface it even more deeply into your audio system a lot of AV receivers for example a work with Alexa now so yeah again I think Amazon's angle is gonna be cheaper that's what they've done in the past you know that's my safe bet is that they're just gonna make something that's all integrated all-in-one and you know undercut all these are their AV receivers out there and the benefit there if they do make it a product where they lose money on it the idea is that if you establish yourself as the assistant in the home in your living room in that heart then that sets you for the entire next stage of that computing that's a really good point kind of getting in there and being like alright I'm the ecosystem now sorry Apple and Google you know you're using Amazon stuff it's a short-term loss for a long-term game if that's the play that they're actually making yeah yeah we'll see I mean the it and you know the reader has a good point it's hard to you know think of people in the audiophile universe going oh yeah Amazon great sounding stuff so kind of snobby bunch are they gonna come up with a brand you know maybe they're gonna come up with a new brand like they did for clothing or you know it's not an echo product I mean echo has weird audio audio connotations anyway anyway anyway but when they do come out with the thing maybe they'll use their Amazon music brand we wrote that you know I feel like that's a brand that Amazon might want to push and maybe they'll start saying you know here's our audio gear that's for Amazon music who knows you know what they're going to do yeah our nesto says that the Sonos Beam is killing the game for me linked up to the Sonos one sure does the job that makes me want to ask cats and Joan what do you guys run it for audio at home he answers gonna be very boring because I live in a small Manhattan apartment with very thin walls and so my audio system is like a Bluetooth speaker that's very small but I put right next to my husband and I in bed so that our neighbors who share our wall can't hear anything yeah so when we're watching Game of Thrones it's like right next to our ear nice yeah I live in suburbia with you know a decent sized living room and I just have a Denon 5.1 receiver I've some appeareance speakers wired for surround uh Atlantic sub everything's controlled with a logitech harmony which is you know a little bit old-school but you know again I have that logitech harmony does talk to my Amazon product and I can do a lot of stuff with that interface and it works really really well a lot of people out there are using you know again Alexa with a bunch of other gear like I am already and it's it's pretty sweet and you know if anybody hasn't had a real 5.1 system and you move into a space that can support it I highly recommend it it's wonderful for gaming and for everything else oh yeah no it's it's worth it come out to the suburbs for me I'm running a Samsung 5.1 system that's got some miles on it it's really nothing all that flashy but I'm a similar situation with Jonah I've got neighbors not quite as tight but just enough for me to try to be considerate until I pump up the Yamaha RN 303 when it's time to listen to Steely Dan at night and then I apologize profusely put my neighbor's we are just about out of time Ernesto goes on from his prior comment to say I want Google assistant on Sonos one and beam sonís have been saying they'll update since January still hasn't released anything yeah we got some Google fans in there we got some immense Amazon fans in there no one's bringing up the XP though shocker no love is that is that Apple's product whose product is that well no Bixby and Siri are both sort of in their own little corner of the party where nobody actually wants to talk to them yeah that's just why picture he's got like a top hat and like a I don't ask I'd make sure bowtie and renders right right he's and like pants that go up too high showing his ankles poor Bixby eventually somebody will be his friend just out of pity I think that's a series doing serious his friend at the party out of pity she's really nice she's alright yeah ok ok anyway is that it yeah we're at the end of the show before we go closing thoughts where is the next place that Amazon's voices system is going to infiltrate mmm we got microwaves we got TVs we got speakers maybe shoes yeah hopefully not the bathroom that's a little weird Alexa flush you know like the dishwashers there you go don't forget to wash your hands and your prime sink in the kitchen right yeah that's everybody well I mean they don't the show yeah they don't do like microwaves yet so I really hope that happens Alexa and Alcorn automotive yeah it's a big it's a big wide open field for anyone to want to it's gonna be everywhere won't it being is the real world hopefully the bathroom alright take one last sip of your prime soda it's time to say prime bye thanks everybody for joining us on the 359 podcast we'll be back tomorrow and hopefully maybe we'll talk about that new Playstation that we miss the boat on yeah prime by from ok Joan you want to take us on out yeah in the meantime the 359 is available on iTunes tune in stitcher feedburner Google music google podcasts Amazon echo and of course cnet.com take care folks we'll see you tomorrow the amount you you