Xfinity invades Amazon Echo space

I posted earlier on the now-underway market war between the Amazon Echo family and the just-released Google Home. Both are hardware devices linked to their respective service's cloud knowledge base and user accounts.

Now it appears Comcast Xfinity is getting into the act. When they introduced the X1 system - which I use and really like - it came with a remote control that included voice control. But all you could do with it was avoid pressing buttons. I use it for changing channels and program searching, but that can be done with the buttons, though less handily.

Now Xfinity has decided that the X1 remote should do more:

Not sure of the point here, except that it's easy to envision Xfinity moving into the smart home business, which is where voice control and response, such as the Echo, really shine.

BTW, I pre-ordered the Echo Dot and received it on the release date and left my review here. But it's not long, so:

I got this on something of a lark. My son has the $179 regular Echo and when I visited him it seemed intriguing - but not enough to spend 179 bucks on. So I pre-ordered the Dot when it was announced.

Basically, this is a talking toy. I do find it convenient, though not essential, for checking my calendar or the latest news shorts or getting a quick weather forecast. It also tells really lousy jokes and is handy for a countdown timer or an alarm. But I do not really get a lot of utility out of it -- mainly because I am not willing to lay out the major coin it would take to make it the controller of a smart house. The hardware for that ain't cheap, sports fans.

So I give it four stars for doing what it's advertised to do but for my personal usefulness I'd give it only one or two. If you are willing to spend lots of money for smart devices, you'll probably like it a lot. I think.

Now for the Alexa smart phone app (I use Android). It's used for setup and once you're done with that, it's mostly a tutorial. There are a fair number of "skills" you can activate on the app for the Dot, but most won't be useful to you or any other individual user. What you cannot do with the app do is use it away from home as a voice-responsive Alexa app. So away from home I use the MS Cortana app. Or the Google app. How awkward is that? So Amazon, get Alexa on the smart phone app already. But of course, if you did that, why would you need to sell the hardware?

And that, IMO, is the conundrum: it's a software, cloud-driven piece of hardware that does not really require the hardware.

So I gave the X1 remote a try. Nope, sorry, Comcast, you're not there yet. When I asked it what the weather is, it came through fine. It did not talk back as Echo and Home do, but it did display the weather report onscreen. Fine. But when I asked it the questions of Comcast's emailed illustration, above, suggested, I got gobbeldy-gook.

"What's the distance from the earth to the moon?" yielded search results for movies that had "moon" in the title.

"How tall is the Eiffel Tower?" yielded, well, nothing except the onscreen words, "unit conversion," and the dreaded pinwheel of everlasting non-functionality.

I have a feeling we're being beta-tested for follow-on development.