What live TV services does the Amazon Echo Show support?

Best answer: The Amazon Echo Show supports live TV with Alexa skills, and now directly with support for Hulu. You can watch any programming that's included in your Hulu subscription on the Echo Show, as well as a variety of TV stations that can be accessed through Alexa's skills.

Amazon: Amazon Echo Show ($229.99)

What's an Amazon Echo Show?

The Echo Show is the next generation of the Amazon Echo, its groundbreaking wireless, voice-controlled smart speaker. The Echo connects to Amazon's Alexa Voice Service and allows you to access music, make calls and send text messages, ask questions and get information in response, connect to your smart home devices, and more. Add in video capabilities, and you've got the Echo Show, which does everything the Echo speaker does, with a host of additional visual enhancements.

A 10.1 inch HD touchscreen and 5 MP front-facing camera add another dimension to the Echo Show's functionality. Now, as you listen to Amazon Music, you can view lyrics and album art. You can call up weather forecasts, and access your calendars and to-do lists. The Echo Show still supports voice-activated calls, which also include video calling. Searches now include the ability to see the results of your queries on screen. As with all of its products, Amazon wants to make it easy for you to make purchases from them, and you can now see products before you buy them.

It's a video device as well

It would be a shame if you couldn't watch video on a device with an HD screen. Originally, the Echo Show only provided native support for Amazon Prime Video and YouTube. However, it didn't take long for creative Echo Show enthusiasts to take advantage of the Alexa Skills Kit to create skills that enabled live TV watching. The Stream Player skill enables viewing of live streams from a long list of TV stations, by tapping into their freely available internet feeds. If that menu of sources doesn't satisfy your thirst, and you're handy with writing code, you try your hand at hacking out something like this fellow did to get his fill of BBC and other UK stations.

If you're still looking for more variety, and aren't up to the task of coding your own Alexa skill, fear not: with the advent of the 2nd Generation Echo Show, Hulu will now be supported for live TV viewing. If you've already invested in a first-gen Echo Show, don't fret! Amazon promises that Hulu will be available on the earlier model as well. Now that they've broken the ice, it's likely that we'll be seeing support for more live TV services in the not-too-distant future as well.

Our pick

Amazon Echo Show

$229.99 at Amazon

Watch Hulu on Amazon Echo Show

The 2nd Amazon Echo Show sports a 10.1" HD touchscreen, and offers a variety of visual functions. It now also supports live TV with a subscription to Hulu

Post a Comment

Previous Post Next Post

Smartwatchs