Jordan O'BrienOne of the most useful features of any smart assistant is the ability to ask follow-up questions. It not only saves time and effort of having to repeat the full command, but it also makes voice assistants vastly easier to use, as demonstrated by the latest update to the Fire TV Cube. Now, when users bark commands at their Fire TV Cube, it won’t require the ‘Alexa’ wake word between every action – allowing for a smooth transition between searching for content and playing it.
The Fire TV Cube is a great example of how voice assistants can work in a home entertainment environment. Instead of requiring a remote control and billions of button clicks, it can search for content simply by using Alexa. Previously, one would have to say ‘Alexa, find comedy movies starring Adam Sandler’, and then once the results had popped up then had to repeat the ‘Alexa’ wake word to play a movie. Now, after the first command, users can simply say ‘play Jack & Jill’, and the Fire TV Cube will spring into action.
The Follow-Up Mode is a popular feature of the Echo smart speaker, and it’s just the latest example of Amazon bringing feature parity to the Fire TV Cube. Just last week the set-top box also received support for Alexa’s Announcements feature, while this new update brings the addition of multi-room audio support. That means users can now cast music to the Fire TV Cube and link it to other Alexa-enabled speakers.
Amazon’s update for the Fire TV Cube with Follow-Up Mode and multi-room audio support is rolling out now.