Gadgetory

welcome to the 359 I'm Alfred Inge I'm Dan Ackerman so the reviews are in for the amazon firetv cube the latest gadget from Amazon designed to control your TV with your voice we got our hands on it and the quick rundown is that you know the good news is you can channel surf with just your voice the microphone does a pretty decent job at picking up your commands even over your loudspeakers the bad news is if you have devices outside of the fire TV like if you have a DVR or a game console or Roku you still can't really use your voice to control that Dan you were able to play with the cube for a little bit what were your impressions I did play with you yesterday and you can actually use voice commands for a bunch of different things outside of the fire cube itself but not as extensively as you would with something like a harmony which is really the gold standard of universal remote type devices I did like that the voice commands the Alexa voice commands recognized your voice even if there was loud music play it's actually good because that was the biggest thing I was skeptical about right yeah if you have a movie or music blasting and you go you know it actually heard us mmm almost every time so that was great and when you're controlling stuff on the fire cube which is all your video apps and things like that and amazon stuff great fantastic not a problem it's when you want to mix it with other things in your in your system whether it's your cable box or a game console it works but not quite as seamlessly I feel like it doesn't have the same hooks into the into the commands that let's say a harmony does because when you set up your Harmony it says like what brand of cable box you have what's the model number and it really knows you know button for button what everything is yeah so we gave it a 4 out of 5 star rating on our website I would say it's probably like a 5 if it's if you if it comes with rice which I don't think it does but next up Google has released an update that shows you how much information the tech giant like has on you so after Facebook's data misuse scandal they also released this tool to tell you how much data that it has on you but I also remember people pointing out that Google has way more information on you than Facebook does which makes sense you know Facebook is generally just one social network but Google has data from your chrome Brad they're from Gmail what you're looking up in Google Maps YouTube what you watch on YouTube where you are if you're using like an Android phone and so it obviously has a much bigger data profile on you so this update you can find your privacy settings and the data that they have on you from like Google's apps now right now it's available in Gmail but they're planning on rolling it out to like maps and photos and all these other like you know Google apps are available is this something that you're planning on using I mean I'll take a look at it but I find there's a lot of a lot of big hype about privacy settings and privacy and information tools and for the average consumer they're never gonna make the three or four mouse clicks required to take a look they won't know what to look for if they do you and I are very aware of this but if you saw the average person in the streets oh my god Google's tracking me alright what else is new yeah they do people just it's so complicated issue they just throw their hands up and say I don't even know what to do about there's always this whole thing of like data apathy in the sense of just exactly that's a great term yeah of that where the idea is that you know yeah Google has all my information but I also like knowing where I'm going at anytime you know like it's its transparency theater yeah yeah I thought that's that's a pretty good way to describe it so also the Supreme Court decided today that states can charge you for sales taxes online even if the place you're shopping from doesn't have a physical location in that state which was a ruling from a 1992 case that essentially had set the president for about like you know decade what this really means for you and what you really need to know is that you'll probably be paying more for stuff you buy online now which I'm sure no one is a fan of well it's that loophole they're closing where if somebody is in a different state and you buy something they don't know which state to charge your sales tax for so they don't we knew this loophole would close eventually yeah and just want to include this in breaking news this morning Intel CEO Brian krzanich resigned after the company's board learned of a consensual relationship with an Intel employee the company's chief financial officer Robert Swan will be stepping in while they search for a new CEO that's all the time we have for the show today if you liked what you heard check us out on CNET I'm alfred ring Herman thanks for listening look at that 4 minutes are done alright see you guys 25 seconds over we got to do it again we got free passes what a bunch of pros take 2 take 2 do it again alright so as always thanks everybody for joining us I'm gonna go ahead and hop into the chat and pull out some questions and comments so that we can keep this conversation truck rolling and I guess right out the gate let's take one from Matthew dacher who says uh will the fire cube accept commands if I give them to something like the Sonos beam we were trying to set up something very similar to that yesterday I'm not sure if we got it set up I feel like external sound bar speakers are exactly the kind of thing this thing should control but right now one of the big complaints is outside of the fire cube it doesn't do volume and mute commands at all I think but if it doesn't right now I feel like that's the kind of thing that would have to patch in because that's what everybody wants I just notices that it has an aux port so if I like plug that into my TV power HDMI infrared something or other and micro USB that's good yes yeah because I was looking at was like live well yeah over our dan would you hold it up for us I'm gonna hold it up for ya there we go let's see okay so here's the front is the top there was some basic volume and power commands here on the back you've got again a power cable in HDMI in an infrared port and a micro USB and that's basically it I think it has a little speaker on the bottom but most of the time you hear it through your TV although it does have I believe a speaker built-in I feel like we should start including in reviews like how easily you can leave fingerprints we've been doing that for years brothers when you're here that well is it when you've been here 13 years like I have you will know that we include fingerprint information on a great many things although it may depend on who's doing the reviewing and what they had for lunch I'm 12 any any any Scott review will have a lower fingerprint section I'm just saying there's a ton of finger prints on yeah that wasn't in the law whew I'm mad I like things that are a little mad that's so the Pellman said everyone what's a touchscreen laptop but then you have a laptop with finger Pattillo I just leave the Cheetos dust all over yeah it's amazing all I had to say was a nice coffee and look at that we have a question from Elton Mokoena he's asking does it have Dolby Atmos it's a good question I do not know off the top of my head let's see if we can pull up the review in the meantime review I just guess it Brent Madison asks will the fire cue plane on Amazon content yes yes and it'll do it right through the cube because the fire TV platform has Netflix and has a bunch of other video services built in so that's the easiest way to do it well this is also different from like your fire like the fire TV stick or anything like that in the sense that you can use this to like channel surf right like like normal channels yes what we did was we switched over to we're like we said Alexa play CNN HD on cable and it switched the input from like HDMI to two HDMI one on our test TV you know turned on the cable box and was able to okay sometimes not every time correctly tuned to but the channel was fresh channels 600 we tried if we said CNN on our particular cable system and went to the standard definition channel which is terrible that's ever since he had an HD then it went to the HD channel or if I gave it the channel number which I knew off the top of my head 600 then it went to the HD it didn't work every time it had some trouble communicating with our cable box occasionally but this is you know day one basically for this product so so I had this question when it was first announced and I don't know if they you know cats my are tested for or anything like that but if I said like Oh turn on like what's the weather would it turn on like the channel like any random like Weather Channel or no I think it would give you the rest standard Alexa weather and it might I didn't try this it might display the Alexa weather you know app yeah but like on like on the screen maybe weather is not not the best example what if I said like turn on like sports or something like that would it like just go to ESPN or wear it like like put on a World Cup game or that's a good question well hook it up and wait we had a TV back here let's hook it up yeah find out I don't have any Wi-Fi in here but I was able to do you know everyone says oh there's no YouTube on the fire platform there's actually a helper app you can get that will basically serve up YouTube inside the silk browser but it's actually fairly seen as experience and it worked really well and we could voice search for YouTube videos through that so you can go on and say like 93 59 past and if it's on YouTube yeah what we search for a lot at home now is my son who's six is fascinated by videos where people eat crazy food like BuzzFeed has that whole he's deeper yeah and they eat like the world's stinkiest fish in like at in the Scandinavian fish so we had to watch tons and tons of videos of people eating sir streaming which is possibly the world's smelliest food is fermented Candice horse and urine yes yeah yeah much worse you should show him Skippy to able what's that that's the LA beast he does eating challenges oh like he drank 20 year old Crystal Pepsi once and okay I've heard of that one Obama yes he he vomits profusely and violently in almost every episode III will tell you that when Crystal Pepsi came out I was actually working in the beverage industry trade magazine business so that was a big story for us I think I believe I was writing about Crystal Pepsi at some point back in the nineties Crystal Pepsi is back in POG form a what an answer for Elton milena it does in fact have Dolby Atmos okay as quoted from David Katz Maya who did the review it has all the capabilities of the $70 fire TV streamer including 4k HDR video Dolby Atmos but it lacks the HDR 10 plus yes but you know there's so little HDR content out there and there are multiple versions of HDR I don't know if I'd lose a ton of sleep over that the big thing is it's basically like the fire stick or fire box but with this big Alexa voice command being built-in and the ability to kind of control other devices if you have your echo hooked up and it's already doing some AV commands for you which is very possible it does it for a lot of things you probably don't really need this if you are a big harmony guy like myself in a lot of other people are you don't really need this but if you're starting from scratch and you want a finer level of control and you want that sort of Smart TV experience that's a lot better than the junkies smart TV apps built into your TV then that seems pretty cool I think it's like $120 I mean certainly not not bad I don't think I'd pay for that but you wouldn't pay for anything you never pay for anything I'm actually taking this home for free after so I'm taking this clock yeah fine okay let's take another question from Liam McBride does the fire TV cube come with a remote yes they all do yeah although if you want to do stuff with your other devices you were gonna need those remotes as well sometimes to do some of the functions sometimes to tell this box basically how to use the commands and right behind your original remote for you or whatever and hit the you know hit this button on it and then the remote also has like a microphone on it right so like if you're stuck if your speakers are really like way too loud or if you just don't want to yell at your TV you can always just like kind of whisper into it as it it might I didn't try that it might rain to my face do you have the microphone in the remote that usually works pretty well actually I mean the Amazon remote leaves a lot to be desired it's simple its basic no super quality like you know there's nothing wrong with it it's not gonna ever serve as a universal remote no no but the voice search is okay like I wish my Harmony remote had a microphone in it so I could do voice search I'd be curious to see if Amazon in the echo app that you could put on smartphone if they could start working in universal remote phone calls there yes although they don't have they don't seem to have that Universal like IR blaster capability that's the key thing yeah that's like the big difference between this cube and like other products right or a like Smart TV stuff yeah yeah like you can you can put it on a TV that's like relics yeah it's a giant the giant blaster and that's what you need like I'm with my harmony setup I've got like the blaster hub I've got a little micro blasters everywhere to make sure I get good coverage I never got that yeah do you wanna pay for a buddy from life improvements if you open Amazon in your Chrome browser you can cast that tab and chromecast is there any way to get google play movies or music in there oh that's a good question that's a very good question I bet a cast of that would work from your browser because I've done that before with I think HBO or something that wasn't on it was something that was not on it gets sticky yeah yeah but it's not the best experience but it's definitely possible I was just casting from my browser this is its Android related and the fire stuff is built on on Android I was just casting from my web browser on a MacBook to Nvidia shield because I wanted some because now they have video content on the Sirius XM app but only on the phone app not on the Android TV or other you know apps only on the phone app and the web browser so I wanted to watch some I want to watch some Howard Stern videos now that they've added those and I just cast it from my web browser right to the shield TV so you know that code that chromecast comes in handy a lot of the time isn't it great how fragmented everything is it's all a band-aid over time frankly I'm surprised you didn't need like three extra dongles did I lose I I basically shoehorned it in III I soft hacked it onto my TV when it was content not intended for TVs but I wanted to watch the the Snoop Dogg interview you can do that IG TV now probably - I guess good TV would also have to be vertical because they don't it's not horizontal yeah oh boy I'm sorry I'm old I don't know what any Instagram stuff mean we have enough time for just a couple more questions storm king is asking is this going to replace your cable box or work with that we've kind of covered on that but that's always a big question if you subscribe to a OTT service that has an app that works on this then perhaps that could replace your cable box or if you just want to consume on-demand content from Netflix and Amazon and is there fire yeah and those services sure I don't know if the Hulu TV the live TV works on its app I don't think it does it but I'm sure it will someday if they want this to be a cable box replacement all you need is a device like Roku does this other devices do this that have the live TV apps that are VOD T replacements for your cable box the problem is everyone thinks I'm gonna cut cable gonna save a lot of money I'm gonna get like the Hulu TV live DirecTV now or stream stream TV watch the Tommy you go through well you know what I'm a real-time news junkie so I need the news channels and a few other things little HDTV Travel Channel I as a 20 year vegetarian I'm obsessed with watching the media strewed shows possible that's my that's my secret shame really behind me at home eating site and watching BBQ pitmasters or or carnival eats there's something kind of beautiful about but it is it is it's it's it's it's not so much forbidden you watch it more so is like I'm better than you kind of things I'm just fascinated that this other world exists I would never eat it but I like watching it I wonder if like me a bunch of like meat eaters watch like vegetarian shows there are no good vegetarian shows that's the problem so if anyone would like to put together a tour of the country's best vegetarian restaurant chef I've had the television host with a lot of experience please call my agent we got a good question here from bill Harry D alright so what do you guys think does the cube really give you anything above not having to talk to your remote that's an interesting question the way it's phrased I think voice commands really are the future of a lot of home AV and and and and other control the fact that you can do it out loud you know what if I have my shield my Nvidia shield I can't be bothered to find that goddamn remote or the controller and talk into it I'm just frustrated want to do it out loud I used to do it with the Kinect on the Xbox but that never really worked but I'd like be I like the possibility of it you could probably do almost all this to a regular echo just sitting in your room because as that great far film or a Google assistant that's kind of this with the IR blaster built-in and some other AV functionality that that's thing if you have a lot of equipment you don't really need this if you're starting from scratch it's certainly worth looking at if you're invested in that Amazon ecosystem but I always tell people I don't remember what life was like before we talked to our lightbulbs what kind of life are we living I I just can't I wouldn't even know how to turn on a light I will say I've recently gotten smaller but I really do enjoy oh my god talking to intelligent or not I mean I can do it turn on different rooms the numbered lights within each room I do i do percentage just now I'm like I'm like Alexa turn on to 50% and it is it is kind of effin brilliant is kind of annoying for me though cuz like the last few days I've been sick and I've had like a sore throat and it's like I got to turn this light on but it also hurts for me to talk well you just do the phone app and you go where's the Philips now but I could also just hold the damn thing no no my my son named the room lights in his room Easter Bunny there we go Alexa turn off Easter Bunny when it's time to go to bed malleable that's very nice all right let's take one more and we'll switch gears on the way out the door here one more from Ville Harry this is a great question what do you see changing with Intel going forward I mean the big question for Intel actually has nothing to do with the news today the big question mark for Intel is what is gonna happen next year will they lose a major customer when and if and I'm not convinced they will when Apple moves away from Intel chips in their laptops and desktops and moves to their own you know a series style chips which they used to do many many many years ago then it was big news that they switched to Intel had made MacBooks much more compatible with everything else in the universe and basically made them the default computer for a lot of people will Apple move away what will that do to Intel's business they already have you know AMD and and and and other companies nipping at their heels on other parts of the business can they can they maintain market dominance without Apple and will Apple take that big leap of faith to move away from the Intel platform which is just so Universal even though when we see those Snapdragon handful of Snapdragon laptops they don't work that great and there's some stuff that's just incompatible and that's what happens when you move away from that from that Intel platform that's my read on that yeah he said it much better than I could have so I'm just gonna leave leave it with that okay and with that we are just about out of time and that's gonna be it for us for the week thank you to Dan for coming and subbing in last second as we were man down today down I always are a good life raft Alfred you want to take us out yeah sure 3:59 podcast is available on iTunes to tune in stitcher Google Play Music Google podcast the Amazon echo and of course cnet.com thanks for listening bye everybody see you next week