Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Smart Home
  3. News

Amazon’s Fire TV Cube gets intercom-style Alexa Announcements feature

AJ Dellinger
By
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Amazon wants its Fire TV Cube to become a central part of your home, and not just for entertainment purposes. To show off its usefulness, the company is extended Alexa Announcement compatibility to the streaming media box. The one-way intercom style feature allows you to communicate with other Alexa-powered devices throughout their home.

Here’s how the Alexa Announcements feature works on the Fire TV Cube: All you have to do is trigger Alexa and give it something to broadcast by telling it to announce something. For example, say “Alexa, announce the movie is about to start.” From there, Alexa will rely the message to all of the Alexa-enabled devices connected to your account. Other Alexa speakers will play the message “The movie is about to start” in any room that they are located. It’s a perfect tool for quickly delivering a message to every member of your household. The command also working with the trigger “Alexa, tell everyone” or “Alexa, broadcast” followed by your message of choice.

Recommended Videos

In addition to working as an intercom for the rest of your home, the Amazon Fire TV Cube will also be able to receive notifications from other devices throughout your home and provide you with that information. If you have smart devices installed in your home, you can connect it with Alexa and have certain actions provide an announcement over the Fire TV cube. Say you have a smart doorbell at your front door, if it detects motion, it can tell Alexa to broadcast that via the Fire TV Cube. While you’re watching your programming, you will receive an announcement that someone is at the door. You can then tell Alexa to show you a feed of your front door if you want to check out who is outside.

Related

Support for the Alexa Announcement feature on Amazon Fire TV Cube is available to all customers located in the United States. You can customize what types of announcements your Fire TV Cube receives and what Alexa devices will broadcast your announcements by managing the Alexa Announcements feature through the Alexa app on your smartphone.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
AJ Dellinger
AJ Dellinger
Contributor
AJ Dellinger is a freelance reporter from Madison, Wisconsin with an affinity for all things tech. He has been published by…
Amazon’s new Echo Pop brings Alexa for $40; Echo Show 5 gets a revamp
Amazon Echo Pop in four colors.

In addition to new Echo Buds, Amazon today also announced new entries in the speaker and display categories, with the Echo Pop, a new Echo Show 5, and a new Echo Show 5 Kids.
“Customers around the world love Alexa as their trusted, personal AI — they’ve now purchased well over half a billion Alexa-enabled devices, and use of Alexa increased 35% last year,” Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa, said in a press release. “These new devices give customers more options and more utility at an incredible value. And as with every Echo we’ve shipped, these devices will only continue to get better as we add even more generative AI-powered experiences for Alexa throughout the year.”

The Echo Pop looks like someone shaved the top off an Echo Dot, and the price is appropriately shaved as well. It's $10 less expensive than the Echo Dot, landing at $40 ... a pop. The front-facing speaker is directional, so maybe don't expect it to fill a room. But Amazon still says it has "full" sound. It also has support for Amazon's Eero mesh router network built in, with an Echo Pop able to extend a network up to another 1,000 square feet. The Echo Pop is available in Lavender Bloom, Midnight Teal, Charcoal, and Glacier White.

Read more
Amazon Fire TV Channels brings even more free TV to the platform
Amazon Fire TV Channels.

Amazon today announced Fire TV Channels, which brings even more free ad-supported TV — otherwise known as FAST — to the Amazon Fire TV operating system.

The gist is simple: You'll see even more free video promoted to you on the Amazon Fire TV home screen from the various sources within the FAST universe. That means in addition to all the content currently available on Amazon Freevee (formerly known as IMDB TV), there will be video from the NHL, Xbox, and TMZ. There will be a new travel category, too, and Conde Nast and the PGA are teed up next.

Read more
More than 100 Amazon Originals head to Amazon Freevee
Amazon Freevee app on a TV.

If you needed any more proof that branding is out of control, consider the following sentence: Amazon today announced that more than 100 Amazon Originals, which first appeared on Amazon Prime Video, will be made available for free on Amazon Freevee.

Or, in other words, you'll be able to watch things like The Wheel of Time, Reacher, A League of Their Own, and LuLa Rich — to name but a few — for free, without a subscription to Amazon Prime.

Read more