Alexa for Sony Android TV - what's your experience ?

[chdawes72]

I can't find this covered already so starting a new thread as I thought it might be good to collate/share experiences.

I've connected my KD43XF8577 to Alexa using the app on the TV and the Alexa Skill. It's definitely 'beta' and needs some work but here's some of my findings on some of the supported commands:

• POWER ON/OFF** 
  "Alexa, turn on TV." - Seems to work but sometimes Alexa comes back to say TV not responding even though it just turned on!
  "Alexa, turn off Living Room TV." Seems to work fine.

• CHANGE CHANNEL BY NUMBER OR NAME
  "Alexa, change channel to ______ on TV." See below
  "Alexa, next channel." Seems to work fine for next and previous
  "Alexa, change channel to 5." Partially works when YouView is Disabled. Changing to a 10 or above works but changing to 1 to 9 doesn't!
  1 = 56, 2 = 702, 3 = 703, 4 = 47, 5 = 56, 6 = 698,  7 =697, 8 = 698, 9 = 698
  Worst of all - if YouView is enabled it doesn't work at all - just says it's not supported !!!!!
  
  CONTROL VOLUME
  "Alexa, set volume to 15 on Living Room TV."*** Seems to work fine
  "Alexa, turn down the volume." Seems to work  fine - increments by +/- 10
  
  MUTE/UNMUTE
  "Alexa, mute TV." Seems to work fine
  "Alexa, unmute." Seems to work fine
  
  CHANGE INPUT
  "Alexa, switch input to Blu-ray on Living Room TV." Seems to work but with YouView enabled you can't say switch to 'Digital' which you can when disabled to get back to TV.
  "Alexa, switch input to HDMI 1." Seems to work fine
  
  CONTROL PLAYBACK FOR DVR OR STREAMING CONTENT
  "Alexa, play on TV." Seems to work fine - tested in iPlayer
  "Alexa, pause." Seems to work fine - tested in iPlayer
  "Alexa, fast forward." Seems to work fine - tested in iPlayer
  "Alexa, rewind." Seems to work fine - tested in iPlayer

All in all a bit of a mixed bag and certainly worthy of the 'beta' title. What's especially disappointing is that with YouView enabled it's very limited ... Sony/YouView need to do a lot of work to make this as good as some of the other implementations of Voice Control via Alexa that are out there ...

[Kuschelmonschter]

Here is my experience, although in German language.

"Alexa, TV einschalten" ("Alexa, turn on TV")

Doesn't work anymore as soon as the TV hit deep sleep which happens some time after switching off the TV (might take up to 2 hours).

Same is true for Video & TV SideView app and Chromecast. All three can't wake up the TV from deep sleep even though Remote start is enabled. It of course works if you switch the TV on immediately after having switched it off as the TV is not in deep sleep then. But Alexa still responds that the TV is not responding.

Remote start worked for a Sony ATV1 model. So the network is not at fault (Multicast over WiFi is fully functional). Looks like it is an ATV2 problem.

"Alexa, schalte TV auf Kanal XY" ("Alexa, change channel to XY on TV.")

The Alexa skill can't resolve most of the German channel names, especially those with numbers and special characters inside (e.g. Sat.1, ORF SPORT+). Same is true for Google Now/Assistant integration.

"Alexa, TV stummschalten" ("Alexa, mute TV.")

For some reason, this simple command is not recognized in German language. I probably have to work on my pronunciation ^^ .

"Alexa, TV lauter" ("Alexa, turn down the volume.")

When audio is set to audio system (ARC), volume is changed in steps of 1 via HDMI-CEC. Needless to say that this is pretty annoying. Setting volume to some numeric value does not work for ARC/CEC.

I probably have to add that I am not using an Echo device but Alexa via the respective app on an iPhone X.

Another thing is that if you perform a factory reset without previously unlinking the TV as Smart Home device from Alexa, you won't be able to assign the same TV name after the reset anymore. You can't unlink the TV after a factory reset anymore. Seems like the information is stored in some persistent location on the TV which does not get wiped on a factory reset. So make sure to unlink the TV via the Alexa app before performing a factory reset.

The thing is pretty beta and indeed not very functional, especially in German language and when doing audio over ARC. Not much of a surprise though. Sony just can't do software...

[chdawes72]

Thanks! I've not tried waking from deep sleep yet ... One for the morning!

I can't seem to get any of the tune by name attempts to work but guess that's what's screwing up the <10 numbers tuning as they contain some of the numbers in the names.

I have however experienced the issue of the TV name being retained but unusable after a factory reset 🤔 super annoying! 

Hopefully someone from Sony or their app developer will realise as it doesn't seem to have been very thoroughly tested...

[chdawes72]

Further update - haven't managed to do the wake from deep sleep yet as the kids were up first!

But CHANGE CHANNEL BY NUMBER OR NAME
"Alexa, change channel to ______ on TV." Seems to work if you can remember the names okay although not tested with YouView enabled yet (see above).

For instance saying change channel to BBC One goes to 1 and change channel to BBC one HD goes to 101

[Kuschelmonschter]

Have you tried waking up from deep sleep by now?

[chdawes72]

Yes - seems to always wake up but does sometimes suffer from the issue of Alexa saying the device isn't responding but that happens just as it kicks into life - I assume the timeout is just a little too short!

As with everything Alexa so long as you remember to say the commands in the right order it works quite well to turn on/off and change channel/volume.

[GreatBigBadger]

Thanks for this rundown, which mirrors what I see. I have to say it's pretty rubbish that Sony can't get its TVs to respond to probably the most basic of voice commands, to be able to change channel by channel name. Alexa says the command isn't available on the device TV, whenever I try. Using channel number is of limited use (and even that's unreliable in my experience), and you'd have to keep a table of channels and numbers by your sofa.