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I bought an echo show and am really disappointed .
You can’t use the screen to do a physical search rather than getting the silly cow to know that you want to listen to the original band Death not the later people who stole the name.
Mrs Zip wants to listen to a specific episode of a podcast but it always defaults to the latest one.
Is there anyway to have the user interface of a tablet with the always listening convenience of an Alexa?
Depending on the app being used, would controlling it from your phone be good enough? That's what I often do for my music and podcasts on Spotify, just need to link accounts then hit the button to listen on the Echo.
Probably something like this: Alexa app installed on the tablet, and running. Then go to the tablet settings to stop it going to sleep/always on.
But then you'd likely get the same results
Have gone on the Alexa app but there doesn’t seem to be an option to search on Apple Music. Amazon is there with the option to add Spotify. <br />I definitely have apple linked.
You are unlikely to get better results on the app than on a real Echo. I'd expect that you'd get the same at best. I have a baby Show on my desk, and I kinda concur that it's a bit crap.
With the podcast thing that's probably down to the podcast app she's using, check in its settings or try a different app.
I don't know anything about Apple Music (or the band Death), sorry. When I first had Spotify I had to say "play [foo] on spotify" otherwise it defaulted to Amazon Music, there was a setting somewhere I had to change. Whether that's related to anything I don't know. It works with playlists on Spotify, so you could for instance add all your Death tracks and go "play [name of playlist]"; whether there's a fruity equivalent, I couldn't say.
I assume you've tried the usual stuff like "ask <whatever> to do <thing>".
The various skills have to be asked to do stuff rather than doing it automatically and they can be quite exacting. I've only just learned how to get Hue scenes activated by voice.
If I ask Alexa to play Cymande it plays Paul Simon.
It is good for switching between radio stations though.
The lack of proper touch screen functionality is stupid.
Echo/Alexa is generally rubbish for podcast.
I use the Amazon music app on my phone for both music and podcasts. When listening to music I can find it in the app and then cast it to an Echo device. But it won't let me do the same with podcasts from the same app. A quick google shows that it's not just me and that they don't really give a reason why. The only workaround I've found is to set it going on my phone, then pause it. Then say "Alexa, carry on playing the XX podcast from where I left off".
Our Echo Show 5 is painfully slow and generally disappointing. I've seen that you can use Amazon Kindle tablets in Echo Show mode where it effectively converts it to an Echo device. Our old Fire 10HD is too old for that setting though.
Our Echo Show 5 is painfully slow and generally disappointing
Not just yours. Think ours ended up the bin as it was terrible. Inherited an 8 which is fine.
yeah the newer shows are a bit faster than the older ones. The worst thing is you can't have an echo show display whats playing on another echo device in the room (ie one with half-decent sound quality) unless you put them in a group (in which case the first one interferes with the quality on the good one)
I think you're likely to find the mic array on a tablet is pants and it struggles to pick up your voice from background noise. Echos have a multi-mic array specifically for that.
Ours just gets used for shuffling playlists and listening to radio. The screen is a bit pointless, the echo dot in the garage is about as useful really...
If I ask Alexa to play Cymande it plays Paul Simon
I know this only too well Imagine the joys of asking Google to play a Gaelic song!
I’ve only just learned how to get Hue scenes activated by voice.
How?
If I ask Alexa to play Cymande it plays Paul Simon
I asked it to "play some plinky music" the other day and played "Plinky" by The Usual ****wit. Not quite what I had in mind.
I only have a dot so no screen. Used mainly as a radio and to play it's Amazon music playlists. If I want to listen to podcasts or play specific music I Bluetooth link to my phone. Once set up it's an easy voice command. Alexa connect to xxxx
So I'd have thought you could do the same and use your tablet (or phone) to drive the echo device as a simple Bluetooth speaker.
^ if you're using Spotify you don't even have to do that, once it's playing on an Alexa any changes on your phone will automatically change it
I’ve only just learned how to get Hue scenes activated by voice.
How?
"Turn on <scene name> in <room>"
So much for natural language processing.