- Amazon really wants to get into your living room.
But it kind of knows that just offering streaming services,
or offering a little box
that can turn your dumb TV into a Smart TV,
eventually isn't gonna be enough to gain entry
into the most sociable room in your house.
So, to enter that space they know
they need to be more convenient,
need to offer your TV an upgrade,
or they need to do something else entirely.
They need to offer something
that can control your entire media ecosystem.
And today at IFA 2019,
we got our clearest look yet at Amazon's grand plan
to invade your living room.
So, Amazon announced one new product today,
one slightly upgraded product,
and it greatly expanded an initiative
that's been exclusive to North America until now.
Our first of these are the fire edition TVs.
We've already seen some of these come to North America,
but the big news here is they're launching internationally.
Amazon is partnered with Currys in the UK,
where it's manufacturing a TV alongside JVC
and it's also releasing some TVs in Germany.
The most interesting of these is a Grundig TV that's OLED.
Now obviously its OLED,
so it's probably gonna look pretty amazing,
but it's also the first of Amazon's TVs
that will offer actual far-field hands-free voice control.
So, basically you won't have to use a remote
to speak to Alexa,
you can just talk to the TV directly.
So, the idea here is convenience.
If someone who owns a Smart TV
is less likely to buy an external set-top box.
Then why not just build your platform
into the Smart TV in the first place?
I mean it's such a good idea
that Amazon isn't even the only one who's trying this.
Roku in the States has partnered
with a number of TV manufacturers
to build Roku TV into TVs
and Amazon's just doing the same thing.
And not only is it convenient for you,
but well it's also pretty convenient for Amazon.
You're probably going to hold on to that TV
for a really long time,
which means your gonna have a Fire TV in your house
for a really long time.
Now the second of these is the Nebula.
Which is basically a soundbar with a Fire TV stick built-in,
you plug it into your TV
and it's as though you bought a set-top box.
And the idea is that it's given you an upgrade.
Someone with a Smart TV might not buy
an external streaming box.
But anyone with a flat screen TV
probably needs a sound upgrade.
Amazon knows, if it can offer you the upgrade,
pretty much anyone will consider it,
even if they've already got
all the streaming services they might need
built right into their TV.
And again, it's not an entirely unique idea.
I mean, just this week we saw Roku
produce a soundbar of its own
that offers you Roku TV.
And in the past Google also partnered with JBL
to build Android TV into one of JBL's sound bars.
Now the last of these is something a little bit more unique,
but it's also something we've seen from Amazon before.
It's called the Fire TV Cube.
And Amazon released the first generation of this device
last year.
This is more of an incremental upgrade in terms of hardware,
but in terms of Amazon's release, it's pretty major.
It's got a faster processor,
it's twice as powerful, Amazon says.
And it can also process
some of your more frequent voice commands locally,
to try to make them faster.
Four times faster according to Amazon.
It now supports HDR10+ and Dolby Vision,
in addition to good old HDR10,
which provides a kind of marginal improvement
to video quality when it's available
from streaming services.
But probably the bigger news
is that it's launching internationally.
Which means that it's not
just a domestic experiment anymore.
It's now a flagship Amazon product.
Now ostensibly,
the Fire TV Cube is just another streaming box.
But in truth, it's a lot more than that
and Amazon has ambitions
for it to be the one device to rule them all.
And to control your entire home entertainment system
via HDMI-CEC and IR blasters.
It's like a universal remote,
if that universal remote
was packing Amazon's streaming platform and Alexa.
So, finding a way into your living room at the moment
is fairly easy for Amazon.
It can offer a nice, cheap streaming device
that has a good interface
and access to all the streaming services you want.
But in the future every single Smart TV
is gonna be able to do exactly that.
And so the barrier to entry has got that much higher.
So, what we've seen here at IFA
is Amazon's grand ambition for what happens
when that future comes to pass.
Where, in the future you'll buy a product that you need
and it just so happens to have Amazon's services
attached to it.
And Amazon wants to get into your living room,
but it also wants you to get into it's ecosystem.
It wants you to get comfortable there
and ultimately it wants you to keep on coming back for more.
So, what's your streaming platform of choice?
Are you already involved in Amazon's OS?
Or, are you using one of it's competitors like Roku?
Or, do you just rely on your Smart TV's
built-in streaming apps?
Let us know in the comments down below
and don't forget to subscribe
for more videos from IFA.
I'm so hungry, I'm gonna go.
I'll see you guys later.