Sony is joining the smart home bandwagon. We don’t know enough smart products from the company but it just announced several audio and video products that now work with Google Home. Soon enough, these Sony devices will work with the Google Assistant. You can soon connect your smart Android TV or speakers with Chromecast to your Google Home.
Google Home is a special voice-activated speaker that “listens” to your voice commands. It’s the closest rival of the Amazon Echo powered by Alexa. Some of Sony devices will receive firmware updates that include Google Home integration. With the update, you can control the product with just your voice commands. Feel free to stream music to your Sony speakers or stream videos to your Sony 4K HDR Android TV.
You only need to say “Ok Google, do this…do that” and it will follow your commands. Of course, there are strings of voice commands that must be spoken for Google Home with Google Assistant and the Google Home app for it to understand what you are saying.
Google Home is an “okay” speaker but Sony speakers are way better. With Google Home integration, you can improve on audio volume and quality because you are using Sony products.
Google’s Multi-room group feature allows users to group Google Home and supported Sony speakers together in the Google Home app to play the same song on both Google Home and the Sony speakers using their voice. You can play the same music at once in multiple rooms with the synchronized feature on the Google Home app. Just say “Ok Google, play party playlist on all speakers” and it will follow you.
Some of the Sony-branded audio products with built-in Chromecast include the following:
• Sony Model HT-ST9
• Sony HT-NT5
• Sony HT-CT790
• Sony HT-XT2
• Sony HT-RT5 Sound Bars
• Sony STR-DN1070
• Sony STR-DN1060
• Sony STR-DN860 receivers
• Sony SRS-X99
• Sony SRS-ZR7
• Sony SRS-ZR5
• Sony SRS-HG1 wireless speakers.
SOURCE: Sony
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This is great news. We had the Echo since launch and now the Google Home for four weeks.
tl; dr Basically the Echo you use commands where you talk to the Google Home naturally. The Echo will handle some fuzziness but fundamentally they are variations to commands instead of fundamentally understanding what you are saying.
We have found the Home to handle majority of our use cases better than the Echo. With the exception ordering stuff.
So Thompson put up 60 points. “hey google what is the most kobe scored in a game”? Echo can not do this. Watching a rally and all the people have an acronym on their shirt. “hey google what does X mean” and Google answers.
But it is the inference with music that is where Home really shines. There are times with the Echo you have to do a quick google search but with the Home you can fine what you are looking for with very little and there are situations where the Google Inference is better than a human.
So say “hey google play gwen sting bottle” and Sting and Gwen Stefani starts playing.
The last big difference is the Chromecast as output. This is a big thing for us. So wife says “hey google play SNL highlights on TV and the TV turns on, input set and SNL highlights from YouTube start playing.
Only config by me was renaming the Shield to TV.