Dish Network said it has added new Amazon Alexa voice capabilities to its family of Hopper set-tops and DVRs that enable customers to set recordings, navigate menus, and launch apps such as Game Finder, Netflix, Pandora and YouTube.

Those new voice controls support Hopper DVRs, including the relatively new 4K-capable Hopper 3, the Hopper Duo and Dish’s Joey and Wally client boxes. The enhanced features build on earlier voice capabilities that let those customers play, pause, fast-forward, rewind and search for content.

Dish said the updated voice capabilities are also compatible with the Fire TV Cube, a new streaming device that integrates Amazon’s voice-based Alexa technology without a separate Echo device.

RELATED: Amazon Unleashes the Fire TV Cube

Dish’s initial integration of the Hopper DVR platform with the Amazon Echo and Echo Dot was launched in April 2017, becoming the first MVPD to enable direct compatibility with Amazon’s voice-powered platform. Dish extended support for Alex on all Joey clients in October 2017

RELATED: Dish’s Hopper DVR Connects to Amazon’s Alexa

In a move to stitch its smart home tech with video streaming, Amazon today introduced the Fire TV Cube, a 4K-capable streaming device that also supports the company’s voice-based Alexa technology.

The combo enables users to navigate content and apps and change channels with their voice, reducing the need for consumers to buy and install a separate Alexa-powered Echo device.

The Fire TV Cube, which broadens Amazon’s Fire TV device lineup beyond the core Fire TV box and Fire TV Streaming Stick, is slated to be released on June 21. The baseline pre-order price is $119.99 and includes the device and an IR extender cable and Ethernet adapter, though Prime members are in line for a discounted price of $89.99, plus free shipping. Those who purchase and register a Fire TV Cube by July 1 will also get a $10 credit for Prime Video.

Amazon is also pitching a Fire TV Cube/Amazon Cloud Cam bundle for $199.98.

The new entry employs eight microphones and supports smart home capabilities and content delivered on traditional Echo devices. Apps supported by the Alexa element of the Fire TV Cube include Netflix, Amazon’s own Prime Video, Hulu, ESPN, Fox Now, Showtime, Starz, PlayStation Vue, CBS All Access and NBC, among others.

Amazon said the Fire TV Cube is also compatible with set-tops from Comcast, Dish Network and DirecTV.

Amazon is introducing the new device as it starts to gain ground in the OTT device arena, a market that is still led by Roku, according to Parks Associates.

RELATED: Roku Retains Edge in Streaming Player Market

Amazon’s latest move might also push rivals such as Apple and Google to come out with streaming products that are more tightly integrated with their voice-powered platforms. Roku is also moving ahead with a strategy that enables its platform to work with a broader landscape of smart home technologies.

RELATED: Roku’s Platform Reaches Beyond the TV

Starz said it has introduced its streaming app with voice control on Amazon’s Fire TV. 

The integration with Amazon’s Alexa system enables Starz app users to control playback of movies and series, including originals such as Power and Outlander, using their voice.

In addition to being integrated with the Alexa Voice Remote, Starz app users can also pair Fire TV devices with Amazon Echo products and navigate content using far-field voice recognition.

In May, Starz completed a similar integration with Google Home.

Introduced in April 2016, the Starz app supports the premium programmer’s standalone OTT subscription service (for $8.99 per month), as well as its authenticated TV Everywhere offering.

RELATED: Starz Launches OTT Subscription App

In addition to Amazon’s Fire TV, the Starz app is also compatible with Android and iOS mobile devices, Sony Android TV products, Apple TV boxes, Roku players and Roku TVs, Xbox One consoles, and LG and Samsung smart TVs. 

Starz, the Lionsgate-owned premium programmer, said it has integrated its app with Google Home, enabling consumers to use their voice to find and control the playback of Stars programming, including original series such as Counterpart,Power and Outlander.

The technical tie-in enables that when Google Home smart hubs are linked to Chromecast-connected devices.

The Starz app supports the programmer’s authenticated TV Everywhere offering as well as Starz’s direct-to-consumer OTT service, which sells for $8.99 per month following a free trial for new subs.

RELATED: Starz Launches OTT Subscription App

The Starz app is supported on iOS and Android mobile devices, Sony Android TV, Apple TV, Roku players and Roku TVs, Amazon Fire TV devices, Xbox One consoles, web browsers, and LG and Samsung smart TVs. 

Comcast has built a dedicated voice team within its digital home engineering organization as the company seeks out ways to accelerate its use of voice commands across multiple service domains, including its X1 TV service, Xfinity Home offering and beyond.

Update: The lead and headline have been adjusted to clarify that that the new dedicated team referenced is within Comcast’s digital home engineering organization that’s focused on extending voice commands to home functionality, rather than a dedicated team focused on Comcast’s broader voice-related activities.

"The voice team works closely with the Xfinity Home apps team, ensuring that the new features and tools are always considered within the context of voice control,” Comcast’s Bryan Kissinger explained in a blog post that was co-authored by Shiv Dhondiyal.

The new voice team built Comcast’s Voice Action Processing Service (VAPS), which processes commands that come way of the company’s home-grown Natural Language Processing agent and determines which other services and APIs to call. One example is launching an app for viewing a camera feed on the Xfinity Home service.

More details about the technology underpinnings of Comcast’s voice commands platform come as the MSO expands those capabilities to additional domains such as home automation and security.

RELATED: Xfinity Home Finds its Voice

That work started with a “guard word” for Xfinity Home commands – for example, uttering “Xfinity Home, disarm” to disarm the home security system to ensure that the voice control system didn’t seek a movie or song called “disarm.”

“Adding a guard word opened a lot of possibilities, but we still didn’t have a way to support more complex functions,” Kissinger explained.

Working with Comcast’s Applied Artificial Intelligence team, Comcast is now developing a way to support more natural commands that work across multiple service domains. Saying, “Xfinity Home, I’m hot,” for example will trigger the system to adjust the home’s connected thermostat by a couple of degrees.

Comcast’s expansion of connected home voice capabilities included adding direct commands for lights and thermostats using Xfinity Home’s ZigBee radio.

In a recent interview, Comcast execs discussed how the company is meeting the scale challenge using an in-house deep learning platform that matches up with an integrated metadata system.

RELATED: Machine Learning Holds Key to Scaling Up Comcast’s Voice Remote (subscription required)

Not only does the system need to know and understand an increasingly broader scope of specific and conversational-style commands, it also needs to grasp the intent of the voice command. Is it a search for a TV program or movie, or is the user telling the smart home system to turn off a light or adjust the thermostat?

RELATED: Comcast Team Developing Smarter Search 

Early on, Comcast used a more traditional, pattern-based algorithm that relied on manual tuning, but later realized that machine learning would be required to train that algorithm to maintain a high level of accuracy while keeping pace with requirements as the scope and complexity of the system continued to expand.

“We saw that the machine could learn how to accurately find intent in a better way than it did prior to that,” Jeanine Heck, executive director of AI product at Comcast Cable, said, adding that Comcast’s dependence on deep learning to process natural language has only become more pronounced over time. “Our machines can learn how to adapt to those [new domains].”

Added Jonathan Palmatier, Comcast Cable’s vice president of product management, voice control: “You’d need an army of people that are trying to capture every possible way that you can construct a phrase, and [that’s where] it starts to get untenable.”

In addition to expanding voice support to multiple Xfinity services, Comcast has also been working on how voice commands can support customer support functions.

Comcast's Voice Platform Leans on Distributed, Cloud-Based Platform 
Comcast launched the X1 voice remote in May 2015, and the numbers suggest that customers have embraced it.

Per Comcast’s figures for year-end 2017, the operator has deployed nearly 20 million voice remotes so far, and customers uttered more than 6 billion voice commands in 2017, roughing out to about 500 million per month.

Comcast backs its voice system with a distributed architecture (via a handful of data centers around the country) that aims to deliver low latency (the time it takes for a command to be uttered and executed) while also giving the system a level of redundancy.

If there’s an issue at one of those data centers, another can be used as a backup and balance the load. That holds true for other aspects of X1, as every button press is a “cloud call.”

The lifecycle of a voice command starts with the remote, which is equipped with a microphone button for the push-to-talk mechanism. Once a command is uttered, it is streamed from the remote to the X1 set-top box using the RF4CE protocol.

It’s then packaged up and sent to a distributed server in Comcast’s cloud infrastructure. That cloud-based system then translated the audio file into text and sends it to Comcast’s natural language processing system, which determines what the user was intending with the original voice command.

Once that is broken down, the system selects the most probable result and executes it and displays that result on the TV screen.

Voice search capabilities are catching on in the pay TV and OTT video worlds, but the pace of consumer adoption could use a bit of a jolt, suggests a new TiVo study on video and pay TV trends.

TiVo, in a study of more than 3,000 adults in the U.S. and Canada, found that of the 20.4% of respondents who have access to voice search for video, just over half (11%) use the capability.

Growth in adoption was relatively flat year-on-year and quarter-over-quarter, but is still 6.6 percentage points from the study from two years ago, TiVo noted in its Q3 2017 Online Video and Pay-TV Trends Report.

About 21.1% said they don’t have voice search capability, but are interested in it.

Among those that do have it, 46.5% said they use a voice remote from a cable operator of satellite TV operator, versus 28.7% who use Amazon’s Fire TV platform, 19.6% who use an Apple TV/remote set-up, and 17.2% use a voice system that works with a game console.

“Pay-TV providers should take note of this trend: consumers are not only aware of voice search functionality, but now that they are accessing voice functionality already in their cars, mobile devices, streaming devices and smart home devices; they will soon be expecting it in their pay-TV offerings as well,” TiVo explained.

TiVo’s latest findings come soon after the company introduced its own lineup of “Vox”-branded products with voice search, and as pay TV operators such as Comcast and Dish Network deploy next-gen versions of their respective voice remotes. Of that group, Comcast has already deployed about 18 million voice remotes that work with its X1 platform.

RELATED: Comcast Launches New Voice Remote

TiVo’s study also found that those who do use a pay TV provider’s voice search technology, 88.5% use it on a weekly basis, and the largest subsection in that group (30.2%) conduct voice searches one to three times per week.

TiVo’s study also highlighted that cross-catalog search, a capability that enables access to traditional linear TV as well as sources of over-the-top content, has become increasingly important to consumers.

Over half (52.5%) of respondents would enjoy being able to conduct such searches, making it a “must-do” feature, TiVo noted in the study.

Pay TV providers are responding to this trend. Comcast, Layer3 TV and Dish Network, for example, have integrated select OTT TV services onto their respective set-top box platforms. TiVo, meanwhile, has been championing this idea for years, as it already provides access to a range of streaming services alongside digital cable services on its leased and retail devices.

More about TiVo’s study, including portions that touch on the growing cord-cutting trend and consumer desire for a la carte TV and skinny TV package bundling will be featured in the December 18 edition of Multichannel News and Broadcasting & Cable.

Espial said its cloud-based “Elevate” video platform has added voice support following an integration that makes its managed offering for cable operators and other service providers compatible with all Amazon Alexa-enabled devices such as the Echo, Echo Dot and Echo Show.

The integration enables consumers with those Amazon products to search, discovery and control live TV, VOD and DVR-recorded content with their voice.

Espial’s Elevate platform was derived from Espial’s acquisition of Arris’s Whole Home Solutions business last year. Espial introduced a managed, turnkey IPTV service for operators under the Elevate brand in July.

RELATED: Espial Seals Deal for Arris’s Whole Home Solution Platform

Espial’s cable operator customers include MCTV; Easton Utilities; HBC (Hiawatha Broadband Communications of Minnesota); Ritter Communications; Shaw Communications; WideOpenWest; Buckeye Broadband; EastLink; Comporium; Consolidated Communications; Service Electric Cable TV, and NOS, a Portuguese service provider.

RELATED: MCTV Teams With Espial on IPTV

MVPDs such as Dish Network and Layer3 TV have also integrated their services with Amazon’s Alexa-powered devices.

RELATED: Dish’s Hopper DVRs Connect to Amazon Alexa

Dish Network has introduced a second-generation voice remote and will look to expand its avaialbity rapidly by bundling it with all Hopper DVRs that go out to new pay TV customers.

Existing Dish subs can upgrade to the new remote for $20. The second-gen remote is compatible with all generations of Dish’s Hopper DVR, as well as client boxes such as the Joey, Wireless Joey, 4K Joey and Super Joey.

Dish, which introduced its original voice remote in July 2016 for $30, said the new model includes enhanced capabilities and features, including motion-activated backlighting and two customizable buttons that can, for example, be used as shortcuts to the integrated Netflix app, Dish’s VOD library or access to parental controls. The new product also is equipped with a Remote Finder that emits beeping noises after the customer presses the “Locate Remote” button on compatible receivers.

RELATED: Dish Launches Its Voice Remote

“Voice control will now come as a standard feature on DISH remotes shipped with our Hopper set-top boxes,” Niraj Desai, Dish’s VP of product management, said in a statement. “In the not-so-distant future, we’ll begin to navigate our TV experience the same way we navigate human conversations. Our new voice remote is not only a technological stepping stone as natural language processing and machine learning progress, but it’s also an effort to bring customers along in the process by increasing their familiarization with voice control.”

Dish’s service has also been integrated with Amazon Alexa.

Heading into the holiday season, Dish has also launched a humorous TV spot where its “Spokeslistener” helps Santa Clause find his favorite Christmas movie (hint: It’s not The Santa Clause).

Dish is upping its game in the voice remote area as it becomes an increasingly standard component of pay TV offerings as well as OTT streaming players.

Dish hasn’t announced how many first-gen remotes it has shipped. Comcast has shipped nearly 17 million voice remotes for its X1 platform so far.

Nuance Communications said Virgin Media is using its Dragon TV voice technology to help power the U.K.-based operator’s TV Anywhere App.

The integration lets app users search for TV shows and movies with their voice by clicking the microphone icon located in the app.

Virgin Media, part of Liberty Global, is using Nuance’s voice tech for the app initially in Ireland, with plans to roll it out to all Virgin Media customers with a Virgin TV package and an Android or iOS mobile device.

"We want our subscribers to have easy access to all of their favorite content - and it needs to be simple to find and use,” Mark Giesbers, VP of entertainment products at Liberty Global, said in a statement. “With all the content we offer across sources like live TV, replay TV and on demand, we need to ensure our subscribers can easily discover their next favorite show or movie.  By developing a voice interface in partnership with Nuance, we've created a new conversational interface that is intelligent and intuitive. We believe voice will grow to become an important means for our subscribers to interact with our entertainment products and services going forward, from apps to devices and smart home appliances.”

Nuance said its Dragon TV technology, part of its Smart Home portfolio, is used in more than 60 million homes.

TiVo is beefing up its retail product line with new versions of the 4K-capable Bolt DVR and Mini client device that support voice-based search and navigation and carry the company’s new “Vox” branding.

RELATED: TiVo May Soon Get Its Voice

The new Bolt Vox and Mini Vox work in tandem with TiVo’s first voice-powered remote control, called the Vox Remote.

The updated video platform, the first major retail refresh since TiVo and Rovi completed their merger last September, enables voice search across live TV, recorded DVR content, VOD titles and integrated OTT services such as Netflix and Hulu. It also supports a new interface that that bakes in personalized recommendations (what TiVo calls a “SmartBar”) and “intelligent predictions” based on prior viewing behavior. Also new is QuickView, an element that lets viewers see shows playing on different tuners built into the DVR, and a one-line channel guide.

In addition to enabling conversational-style voice searching (i.e. “Show me movies with Tom Cruise"), the new voice component is also tied to other TiVo features such as SkipMode and OnePass (i.e. “Create a OnePass for Modern Family).

The baseline TiVo Bolt Vox bakes in four tuners and 500 GB of storage, works with digital cable systems or programming that is delivered over-the-air, and starts at $199.99. 

A beefier version of the Bolt Vox, only for use with digital cable systems, comes with 1 terabyte of storage and six tuners.

The TiVo Mini Vox, which works in tandem with the Bolt Vox and is tailored for whole-home set-ups, fetches $179.99.

Notably, existing TiVo Bolt, TiVo Roamio and first-gen TiVo Mini customers can upgrade to voice control by purchasing a separate TiVo Vox Remote. The Vox Remote for BOLT (in black or white) sells for $39.99, while the Vox Remote for Roamio products (OTA, Pro and Plus) and the first-generation TiVo Mini is available only in black, includes a separate Bluetooth adapter, and is priced at $44.99.

RELATED: TiVo ‘Bolt’ Strikes With 4K, Ad-Skipper

TiVo said its new suite of Vox-powered products will become available on October 29 at TiVo’s web site, Amazon.com, and at Best Buy stores nationwide.

Comcast has issued another batch of updates for X1, its flagship video platform, including a new feature that lets viewers control video playback with their voice.  

Comcast, which has deployed nearly 17 million X1 voice remotes, said customers can now navigate through programming with their voice like they do with traditional remote buttons with commands such as, “jump forward five minutes,” or “go back 30 seconds.”

“Customers can also use voice commands to start, end or navigate to the beginning or end of a program by simply saying for instance, ‘play,’ ‘pause,’ ‘restart this program,’ or ‘go to beginning’,” Keith Vachris, executive director, product Management for Comcast Cable, explained in this blog post.

X1 has also made it easier for customers to get to the platform’s Accessibility settings menu, as customers can now say, “Accessibility” or Accessibility Settings” to access them, or just press the remote’s “B” key. Vachris said about 2 million customers use closed captioning and/or voice guidance.

RELATED: Comcast’s ‘Talking Guide’ Goes Live

Comcast has also refreshed the X1’s sports guide – customers who visit pages of their favorite NFL team will find more prominent branding as well as updated season stats, in-game scores, team record, and standings.

At the end of Q2, about 55% of Comcast’s residential video subscriber base was on X1. The company expects X1 penetration to extend beyond 60% by the end of the year.

Hulu will head into the voice-based navigation and search mix this fall, when the OTT service extends support for Amazon’s Alexa platform.

RELATED: Fire TV Lights Up Far-Field Control

Once integration is complete, “You can ask your Alexa Voice Remote to find, launch, and control content on Hulu or pair your Fire TV to an Echo device to enjoy hands-free, far-field voice control to perform an array of actions on their TV including pause, rewind, fast-forward and start watching favorite titles and channels,” Richard Irving, VP of product at Hulu, explained in this blog post.

RELATED: Amazon Building New Fire TV Models: Report

At launch, Hulu’s integration will support voice commands such as, “Alexa, tune in Bravo,” and “Alexa, watch The Handmaid’s Tale,” and “Alexa, go back two minutes.”

Voice navigation is a small but growing trend. In Q2, 10.9% of consumers of a new TiVo video trends survey said they use voice search functionality to find something to watch on TV, and 19% of respondents said they want that capability. Voice search, TiVo concluded, “is a sticky feature capable of driving higher user engagement” while helping viewers find what content faster.

Hulu, which launched its live TV beta in May, has seen average daily sign-ups rise 98% since March, thanks in part to the popularity of  Hulu’s award-winning original series The Handmaid’s  Tale, Ben Smith, the company’s head of experience, told The Hollywood Reporter.

TiVo appears to be inching toward the launch of a product line that supports voice navigation, according to details uncovered by tech blogger Dave Zatz.

He writes on his blog, ZatzNotFunny, that TiVo has submitted a handful of trademark requests that include the TiVo Bolt Vox and TiVo Mini Vox, speculating that the meaning/origins of “vox” suggests that those products will fill a gap in TiVo’s lineup and bring in voice control, something already supported by MVPDs such as Comcast,  Dish Network and DirecTV.

TiVo merged with Rovi last year, with the latter already having a natural language voice processing/navigation platform in-house that came way in part via Rovi’s 2014 acquisition of Veveo. Dish is already using that TiVo/Rovi tech for its own voice remote, and recently complemented that move by integrating support for Amazon’s Alexa platform on Dish’s Hopper and Wally boxes.

RELATED: Rovi To Buy Video Voice Search Specialist Veveo For $62M

TiVo’s staying mum on it, saying only that it has nothing to announce at this time.

RELATED: Dish Finds its Voice

However, it wouldn’t be a big surprise to see TiVo add voice navigation to its retail line and add a feature that is already offered by streaming platforms from Roku, Amazon, Apple and Android TV. And it makes sense that TiVo will also add this capability to products it tailors for cable operators and other MVPD customers.

Zatz tells us that it’s his understanding that the image of the remote above is of an MSO version, but that TiVo will also create a retail version without the on demand button.

TiVo said it will help bring voice search to Sky Q, a next-gen box and video platform from the U.K.-based service provider.

TiVo said the capability will enable Sky Q customers to use natural language to search across linear TV and VOD.

The technology TiVo is supplying to Sky partly stems from Rovi’s $62 million acquisition of Veveo in 2014. Rovi and TiVo merged last fall. TiVo noted that the system to be used by Sky is built on TiVo’s knowledge graph engine.

RELATED: Dish Launches its Voice Remote

Sky Q is a new whole-home, multiscreen service that competes in the market with Virgin Media, the Liberty Global-owned cable operator that leans on TiVo’s software platform.

RELATED: Sky Meshes With Whole-Home Video

“With Sky Q, we continue to innovate and bring fantastic new features to our customers, who we know are watching more TV than ever before. We want to make it even faster and easier for them to search, discover and watch TV,” Luke Bradley-Jones, Sky’s brand director of TV and content products, said in a statement.