Alexa voice integration

Channels Fire TV Feature Requests
#1

Hi all,

I found an old thread mentioning Alexa voice integration for Channels, but it doesn't appear there's been more discussion on this recently. Anything on the roadmap already for this? I'm most interested in "pause" and "resume," since I use that all the time with other video apps--being able to shout at an Echo while walking away is convenient when the remote is out of reach.

As always, I'd be happy to assist in any way I can (testing, troubleshooting, etc.) if this ends up on the docket.

Thanks!
-Nick

#2

Will take a look at adding pause/resume

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#3

When Alexa first came out and Amazon announced the idea of "skills" I did a bunch of poking at how that works. Seems like the skills need to live in the "cloud" making communicating between the Alexa device and other things on the LAN impossible. That is, unless you run some kind of server on the LAN that can communicate with the cloud component, which I suppose the Channels DVR could do.

#4

Yea setting up alexa skills is insanely complicated and requires a lot of moving parts. You have to use AWS and Lambda to even get started. We're not going down that route.

There is another simpler way to make pause/resume/seek alexa commands work inside video player apps. I implemented the required APIs but it is still not working for some reason.

There's a sample app published by Amazon, but it also doesn't work for me. Can one of you try it and see if "Alexa, pause" pauses the player?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CMDMMP9

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#5

I managed to figure this out. A new beta has been uploaded which should you let you use these basic commands:

"Alexa next" can be used to skip commercials.

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#6

Anyone try this?

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#7

I did ... Pause works resume does not ... Still testing. "Alexa Select" works to resume.

"Alexa Pay" response there is nothing to play.
"Alexa Resume" response there is nothing to resume.

I think it gets confused with Amazon Music

#8

Dumb question, but how do I get the beta fire tv app?

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#9

I go to settings section the player scroll all the way to the bottom you should see update to beta.

I am on BETA (5.29.1) on my FireTV Cube 2

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#10

Okay good to know. I had some trouble when I was trying with echo pair attached, so maybe that's the issue.

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#11

I downloaded the beta and it all seems to be working correctly. Via a paired Echo dot, I checked:
-Pause & Resume on live TV from an HDHR source
-Pause & Resume on live TV from a TVE source
-Pause & Resume on a DVR recording.

All worked as expected and I submitted diagnostics with an "other" category selected.

Interestingly, I think it's also working in the production app version. I inadvertently opened it afterwards and repeated the above tests but did not submit those diagnostics. Happy to do so if you like.

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#12

For me, play and pause work. But rewind/fast forward ## seconds doesn’t work. It skips to the next segment before a commercial.

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#13

Has this been brought to the stable app? Or still a work in production?

#14

Play/pause was working on my Fire Stick 4Ks w/ paired Echos as of last night.

#15

Is this still being worked? If I could change channel by name or number would be my first request. Since Tivo killed their Alexa integration I'm searching for another solution. Alexa would be preferred but Google voice would be ok.

Thanks,
Marshall