Amazon Alexa lets you talk to your television

Online assistant makes its on- screen debut in Element 4K smart TVs

NEW YORK You’ve been able to ask Amazon’s Alexa to help you search for movies and TV shows and deliver other Alexa “skills” through your television set as long as you outfit it with a special Amazon device. Now you can buy an Alexa TV with the voice assistant built in.

Tuesday, Amazon began taking preorders on special televisions built with Alexa, a new addition to the sometimes troubled market for TVs that respond to your voice.

The Element Electronics Ultra HD 4K smart TVs are the first televisions with the Fire TV Edition built in, an advance announced during the CES industry confab in January. These make it easier to use Alexa than the previous method, which required buying and connecting a Fire TV external streaming media player or Fire TV Stick to your television. I got to check out a demo. With the supplied voice remote control, you can summon Alexa and bark out various commands, from changing the channels to accessing on- demand content, the more than 300,000 TV episodes and movies available from Netflix, Amazon Video, HBO NOW, Showtime, Hulu, Sling TV and others — as long as you buy these subscriptions. You can also tap into what Amazon says are 15,000 channels, apps and Alexa skills. Among other things, you’ll be able to surface Yelp restaurant reviews, dim the household lights, control other smart appliances or follow the lyrics on the TV screen as you sing along karaoke- style.

If you ask Alexa to “go to PlayStation,” say, the TV is smart enough to switch to the appropriate input. You can also ask Alexa to “play HBO Now,” “fast- forward one minute” or find “Clint Eastwood movies.”

Unlike an Amazon Echo, you’ll have to hold down the remote control to communicate with Alexa. The TV is not in a listening mode waiting for the “Alexa” wake word.

Amazon is following the path taken by rival Roku, which, besides the external media set- top boxes and streaming sticks it sells that connect to the TV, has also built streaming capabilities directly into a television.

Google’s Android TV platform is also built into certain televisions, but there still are no TVs that incorporate the smarts from Apple TV set- top boxes.

The fact these Alexa TVs aren’t always listening will cheer viewers who might be worried their TV might be spying on them. In February, Vizio had to pay $ 2.2 million to settle charges it was collecting data on viewer habits without their consent. And in 2015, the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a complaint with the FTC over Samsung’s smart TV software and always- on capabilities.

The new Element TVs will come in four screen sizes — at 43, 50, 55 and 65 inches, and cost $ 449, $ 549, $ 649 and $ 899, respectively. Amazon is throwing in a free indoor over- the- air HD antenna for those who preorder ( while supplies last). These latest models, and similar TVs that will carry the Westinghouse brand, will hit stores in June.

The on- screen Fire TV interface is clean, with rows showing featured content, recent stuff you’ve watched, apps and games, and so on. The Element TVs include 3GB of memory and 16GB of storage, which you can expand either through an optional SD card or by connecting a USB drive. They also have Wi- Fi and Bluetooth and four HDMI ports, along with other connectors.

You can also tap into what Amazon says are 15,000 channels, apps and Alexa skills.

AMAZON The on- screen Fire TV interface is clean, with rows showing featured content, recent shows you’ve watched, apps, games and more.