SMART SPEAKERS
Should you let them take control?
Speech recognition is being touted as the biggest change since the mouse. No need for a screen interface, a keyboard, a mouse, even a touchscreen. The various breeds of talkative smart assistants are now battling for command of Australian smart homes. But should you be in a rush to abdicate your rule over the lounge room?
Too many apps
For a while it has seemed that smartphones would be the interface with which the smart home would be ruled. Even those companies involved in professional smart-home systems, who had their own touch-screen controllers available for wall-mounting and desktop, quickly saw how the rise of the iPad would make tablets and smartphones the controllers of choice. The app quickly became king.
Except… we soon discovered that reaching for the phone in your pocket is a pain when all you want to do is issue a simple decree like turning on a light. Constantly jumping between smartphone apps is also a hassle as you negotiate with the warring fiefdoms which make up your digital kingdom. We regularly review products with control only via their app, and they usually fail the ‘mute’ test — if your phone rings, you simply don’t have time to open an app and mute playback prior to taking the call. And for some smart-home devices, once the novelty of the smartness wears off, it can become more trouble than it’s worth — especially for your loved ones who might not share your enthusiasm for living with bleeding-edge technology.
It took the rise of the talkative smart assistant to unite the digital realm and turn a house full of smart devices into a truly smart home. But in return, your devices must swear allegiance to one of three smart overlords: Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa or Google Assistant.
And that leaves you in the same position. After a while you realise that in order to keep the peace, you also need to bend the knee. This can present challenges when your favourite home entertainment brands have perhaps sworn their allegiance elsewhere.
Battle Royal
Google, Apple and Amazon all sell their own speakers to bring their smart assistant to life. While Siri is wedded to Apple’s one-size-fits-all HomePod, there are a range of Google Home and Amazon Echo smart speakers to choose from. Alexa and Google Assistant have also jumped into bed with third-party speaker makers such as Sonos, JBL, Harman Kardon, Panasonic, Sony and LG.
With these companies having a stronger background in prioritising sound quality, this is good news for audiophiles who are intrigued by smart assistants but aren’t prepared to compromise on music performance. The bad news is
Voice assistants and ‘smart speakers’ are taking over the home, connecting home devices with music, entertainment and smart-home functions. Adam Turner debates whether it is yet time to surrender your lounge room to the all-powerful smart overlords.
that third-party smart assistant support is often “on the roadmap” for Australian users, so for some functionality you’ll have to either wait or try to outsmart your smart speakers and trick them into thinking they’re overseas.
Some examples. Sonos’ Play One speaker now finally works with Alexa in Australia. But as we write, Australians still waiting for Sonos to embrace Google Voice Assistant.
We’re also waiting for support for Google’s voice commands to come to a range of other Australian entertainment devices — from LG’s smart TVs and soundbars to the Foxtel Now streaming video box. Often smart functionality gets stuck in the ‘coming soon’ position.
At least for now Australians can use Google Assistant on a Google Home speaker to send video to a Google Chromecast dongle plugged into their television. Likewise they can send music to speakers that are hooked up to a Chromecast audio adapter. The same trick doesn’t yet work in Amazon’s Australian ecosystem, as Amazon’s local ‘Fire TV’ video dongle won’t listen to Alexa — even though it does in the US.
Meanwhile you can’t use Siri on Apple’s HomePod to send music to other speakers, or even yet to do much in the way of controlling an Apple TV, even though Apple TV supports voice commands via the button on the remote.
We are all individuals
One key difference between the smart ecosystems is that right now only Google Assistant can recognise different voices in an Australian home. This lets it keep track of everyone’s individual taste in movies and music, plus it allows Google Home speakers to offer personalised answers to calendar queries and other questions.
Meanwhile Alexa and Siri assume that every request comes from the primary account holder — which can screw up music recommendations if some members of your household favour Miley Cyrus over Miles Davis.
Siri on the HomePod can’t recognise different voices, but once again this is believed to be “on the roadmap”. Meanwhile, Australians are still waiting for Alexa to learn this skill, even though she’s already mastered it in the US.
Stay in control
While some smart assistants are still learning how to recognise different voices, they all have a knack for controlling the devices spread around your home. This means a smart assistant can act as a control centre for your entire house.
In theory you no longer need to care about your brand of smart device, which language it speaks or whether it communicates by Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee or smoke signals. You simply tell your smart assistant want you want to happen and it issues forth commands. (In practice, it’s not quite that simple, as support between brands and ecosystems can vary.)
You can give the word to dim the lights, draw the curtains, turn up the heating, and fire up your home entertainment system in preparation for movie night. You don’t even need to reach for the remote control on the coffee table — if your smart TV or set-top box can also be controlled via a smart speaker.
Lost in translation
Of course if you’ve spent any time with Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant then you’ll know they’re not always great listeners. They all supposedly use “natural language processing”, meaning you can explain to them what you want rather than bark specific commands. Even so, smart speakers can be pretty stupid sometimes.
When it comes to requesting music, Google Assistant seems currently the best at under-
standing what you want and learning your habits over time — helped by the fact it recognises the different members of your household.
Google Assistant and Siri also have an appreciation for the classics which Alexa lacks. Ask Alexa to play “Joshua Tree”, “LA Woman” or “Rolling Stones” and she doesn’t pick what you’d expect, even though these albums and artists are in Amazon’s music library.
But while Google Assistant and Siri know their music legends, Siri still has a bad habit of mishearing you and assuming that you have a Millennial’s taste in music.
Whichever of the three assistants you embrace, you’ll find that you’re often forced to repeat yourself and chastise your so-called smart assistant for being so dumb. Unfortunately hurling abuse at them doesn’t help, though keeping track of your insults would certainly offer a handy KPI for measuring performance and customer satisfaction.
Sometimes they ignore you; other times their ears prick up even when no-one was speaking to them. (You’ll likely end up giving your smart assistant a nickname, like “GG” or “Lexy”, so you can talk about it behind its back.)
Misunderstandings abound, even when you’re sure that you’ve made your intentions clear. You need to choose your words with care, as even if your smart assistant does hear you correctly you still might not get the result you desire. For example, you might say “Play The Commitments” expecting to hear the soundtrack on the speaker in the corner of the room, but instead the movie starts playing on the Chromecast plugged into the television upstairs. You can specify a particular device for playback, but that adds a layer of complexity to your command that can in itself often cause confusion.
Life becomes even more complicated if you have several smart speakers spread around your home and the wrong one responds to your request. The tech giants insist this shouldn’t happen, but when it does, you find yourself arguing with two stupid smart speakers at once.
Another frustration is that smart speakers lack separate volume controls for music and voice. As it stands, you can crank up the music for late afternoon productivity boost, only to be deafened by the shouty smart assistant later than evening when you check on the weather forecast before going to bed.
One last issue is that using a smart speaker to control devices at night can be impractical when you’re trying not to wake the household. Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant have yet to add a decent night mode which mutes replies rather than repeating back every command.
Talk the talk
Controlling third-party entertainment gear with a smart assistant can be even more cumbersome, as you need to explain exactly what you want, where you want it from and where you want it to play.
Voice commands in the lounge room might seem like the pretentious solution to an extremely first-world problem, but they become more practical when your hands are full — whether you’re eating your dinner, nursing a baby or simply trying not to wake the cat on your lap.
Even so, if your list of demands isn’t met first time then it can feel like negotiating a hostage situation. You grow more and more frustrated as you realise it would
have been easier to just push the cat off your lap and reach for the remote, just as it was easier to cross the room and flick a light switch rather than reach for your smartphone.
You’ll find a growing range of home entertainment gear with built-in support for voice commands, from the Apple TV player to Android TV-powered devices like the Vodafone TV set-top box and Sony’s Bravia television range. Other television makers such as LG, Samsung and Panasonic have also jumped on the voice control bandwagon.
You typically need to press a button on the remote control to activate voice recognition, an arrangement which some people might prefer rather than having their home entertainment gear eavesdrop on every conversation. This also reduces the chances of you grabbing the smart assistant’s attention by accident — a common problem with Amazon’s Echo speakers as they’re woken with a single word like “Alexa” rather than a phrase like “Hey Siri” or “Ok Google”.
Of course at this point you’re already holding the remote, so it’s often easier to just push a few buttons to control the television rather than try to explain yourself.
IQ test
Unfortunately some smart assistants aren’t that bright, with the variations on Android TV a great example. Google Assistant running on a Sony Bravia television that’s powered by Android TV is about as clever as Google Assistant running on a Google Home speaker. You can ask a wide range of questions, as well as control the television and search for content.
Android TV running on the Vodafone TV set-top box might look the same as a Sony television, but it’s much more basic. Ask Google Assistant on a Sony Android TV for “Marco Polo” and it takes you directly to the show in Netflix, while Google Assistant on the Vodafone TV pulls up the Italian explorer’s Wikipedia entry – an interesting read, but probably not what you were looking for.
Meanwhile LG’s new televisions rely on its ‘ThinQ’ smart platform for basic voice commands (see our review in this issue) — but these televisions are also set to add Google Assistant later this year. It will be interesting to see how the two smart assistants co-exist on a television and whether combined they can offer as slick a user experience as Sony’s Android TVs.
Even if your home entertainment gear doesn’t feature a built-in assistant, you still might be able to boss it around via a tiny Google Home Mini or Amazon Echo Dot tucked away in the corner of the lounge room. For example Alexa can control Sonos speakers and Denon HEOS amplifiers, while Google Assistant can drive a Fetch TV set-top box. Support for other gear is on the way but, as usual, Australians might need to wait in line.
URC fight club
Of course you might have already invested in a smart universal remote control so you can wave your magic wand to command every appliance in your lounge room. Thankfully smart assistants seem to be calling a truce with universal remotes, rather than trying to steal their crown.
Alexa and Google Assistant both work with the some of the high-end Logitech Harmony universal remote controls and hubs, along with a few other third-party remote control apps and platforms including Control4 and Crestron, letting your smart assistant lord over your lounge room without the need to reprogram everything from scratch.
If you want to get more DIY you might try an IR blaster like the Broadlink RM Mini 3, which can pass commands from a smart assistant to your home entertainment gear via infrared — although you need to be prepared to dive into programming platforms like IFTTT to make it all work.
Getting better all the time
There is one silver lining to the current perils, and that’s the speed with which these devices are evolving, and that the improvements are usually in off-site software, rather than the hardware you’ve bought. So you can hope for your smart speaker to become better at understanding what you mean, and for its abilities to get ever more wide-ranging as new functionality to be added.
As it stands, however, smart speakers are claiming to be benevolent dictators, yet granting them control over your lounge room can be fraught with peril if they turn against you. Be prepared for a lot of intense negotiations before you can bring order to the chaos… Adam Turner
“third-party smart assistant support is often ‘on the roadmap’ for Australian users, so you either wait, or try to trick them into thinking they’re overseas...”