CES Trend: Your Next Smart Speaker May Be a TV

Alexa, turn on the television: If you’re out to buy a new TV this year, you’ll find barely any brand name device that won’t offer voice control, often powered by Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa. And while the majority of these devices still require consumers to press a microphone button on their remote, you’ll also find some with far-field voice control on store shelves later this year, offering much of the same functionality as an Amazon Echo or Google Home smart speaker.At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, multiple companies announced new models that will include integrated microphones for smart speaker-like voice control. TCL revealed on Monday that it plans to ship select TCL Roku TV models with “an integrated high-performance far-field mic array,” as the company put it in its press release.The company is working with Roku to integrate technologies to deal with ambient noise, and it will also integrate Roku’s nascent entertainment assistant. Other companies who have committed to far-field voice control include Funai Corporation, which plans to release such a TV under the Philips brand later this year, and Hisense, which showed off a model with voice control on the show floor as well.“No more searching high and low for the remote or shouting far and wide to be heard,” the promotional signage next to the TV declared.