The Harman Kardon Invoke Smart Speaker

The Harman Kardon Invoke Smart Speaker

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Premium home audio manufacturer and Blackfire Research partner, Harman Kardon, has teamed up with Microsoft to take on Amazon, Google, and Apple in the smart speaker realm. The Harman Kardon Invoke is the newest smart speaker on the market. While Amazon’s Echo line of smart speakers have Alexa as it’s voice assistant, the Invoke’s voice AI is powered by Microsoft’s Cortana, which makes this an excellent smart speaker for Windows lovers. This is the first smart speaker to feature the Cortana voice assistant, which in the past has lived in Microsoft’s Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs.

 

The beautifully designed Invoke smart speaker is cylindrical in shape, with a narrow top and wide base (107 x 242mm), and comes in either pearl silver or graphite. The Invoke features 360-degree audio with three 45mm woofers, three 13mm dome tweeters, dual-band (2.4GHz/5Ghz) wireless connectivity, Bluetooth, and seven far-field microphones (which can be muted). Through voice commands, you can ask the Cortana powered smart speaker to stream music, set reminders, control paired smart devices, manage your Office 365 and/or Outlook calendar, ask questions, get the news, and make/receive hands-free calls via Skype to mobile phones, landlines and Skype-enabled devices. At the moment, the Invoke only works with three streaming services: Spotify, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn, but Microsoft has promised that Cortana will support Pandora sometime in the future.

 

And because the Invoke smart speaker is by Harman Kardon, you know the audio will sound great. In fact, according to Digital Trends, the Invoke’s audio performance beat out the Amazon Echo and The Google Home.

For more information on The Invoke, check out the Harman Kardon website, and the Microsoft website. The Harman Kardon Invoke retails for $199.00.

Throwback Thursday: Michael Jackson Releases “Thriller”

Throwback Thursday: Michael Jackson Releases “Thriller”

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On this day in 1982, Michael Jackson released his iconic sixth studio album, “Thriller.” Even before recording began, Jackson was looking to create an album where “every song was a killer,” and boy, did he succeed! Featuring hit singles like “Billie Jean,” Beat It,” and “Thriller,” it remains the world’s best-selling album of all time, with over 105 million copies sold globally. “Thriller” won Album of the Year and seven other awards at the Grammy Awards in 1984. “Thriller” was an international success due to Jackson’s overwhelming star quality, it’s excellent songwriting and it’s combination of several musical genres, including pop, rock and funk. In 2003, Rolling Stone placed “Thriller” at number 20 on their list of “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” Not only that, the music video for the song “Thriller” is credited as transforming the medium of music video from a promotional tool used by studios to sell records, into an art form.

Powered by Blackfire: Pioneer Fayola FS-W50 Wireless Home Theatre System

Powered by Blackfire: Pioneer Fayola FS-W50 Wireless Home Theatre System

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Blackfire Research is proud to have their FireConnect Multi-room Technology in the new Pioneer Fayola FS-W50 Wireless Home Theatre System.

 

The Pioneer Fayola FS-W50 Wireless Home Theatre System is comprised of two wireless front speakers, a wireless subwoofer, and a main controller unit. The system is “wireless, elegant and extremely versatile.” Besides a power cord, no other physical connections are required, since the system is wireless. With built-in dual-band Wi-Fi, you can access your entire music library, wirelessly, through streaming services like Tidal, Spotify and Deezer, internet radio stations and locally stored music. The FS-W50 also features Chromecast built-in, Airplay, and Bluetooth to accommodate all streaming needs.

 

The Pioneer Fayola FS-W50 Wireless Home Theatre System is perfect for watching movies or television in surround sound. All you need is a second pair of wireless satellites – the streaming receiver of the FS-W50 is able to decode all current sound formats and automatically adapts to the available speakers. Your television and any existing A/V players can be integrated with the FS-W50 via the ultra-HD-capable HDMI connector panel.

 

If you’re looking to “kick it up a notch” and want to supply additional rooms with music, you can easily expand the FS-W50 into a multi-room system. With compatible WiFi speakers from Pioneer and other manufacturers, you can share your music to any and all rooms of your house via FireConnect Multi-room Technology by Blackfire Research.

 

For a full review of The Pioneer Fayola FS-W50 Wireless Home Theatre System, as well as more information on FireConnect Multi-room Technology, check out the review below from AV Hub.

 

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PDF Download: https://i.nextmedia.com.au/Assets/Pioneer_Fayola_FS-W50.pdf

Top 5 Films to Watch on Thanksgiving

Top 5 Films to Watch on Thanksgiving

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Thanksgiving is finally here! After the parade, the feast, the big game, and perhaps a match of touch football in the yard is over, what’s there left to do? Why, watch a Thanksgiving-themed movie of course! Thanksgiving is the only holiday where it’s acceptable to wear sweatpants at the table, stuff your face with a colossal amount of food, and gather ‘round the TV – so take advantage of it! Here is our list of the top 5 films to watch on Thanksgiving with your whole family!

 

5) Free Birds (2013)

It may feel a bit strange watching this film about lovable turkeys after devouring the feathered creature that same day, but Free Birds is a fun, animated film everyone in your family will love. Owen Wilson voices Reggie, a Turkey who finds himself the lucky spared fowl at the annual Presidential Pardon of the Turkey. He then meets Jake (Woody Harrelson), who takes him on an adventure back in time to exclude turkeys from the first Thanksgiving, thus saving their kind from mass slaughter each year.

 

4) Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

Although technically a Christmas film, Miracle on 34th Street begins at The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, where Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) notices that the man hired to play Santa Claus in the parade is intoxicated. After that, Kringle finds himself playing Old Saint Nick at Macy’s flagship New York store – but soon, he starts claiming he truly is Santa Claus, and his sanity comes into question. Miracle on 34th Street is a classic family film to kick off the holiday season!

 

3) Addams Family Values (1993)

The story of the first Thanksgiving has been fictionalized throughout the centuries to be a fairytale gathering of Pilgrim settlers and Native Americans breaking bread together for one glorious, peaceful evening. The real story about what happened before, during, and after that first “Thanksgiving” is nothing like the myth we tell ourselves as a nation, and Wednesday Addams in Addams Family Values is here to remind us that in true Addams Family fashion.

 

2) A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973)

This short, animated classic is sure to put a smile on everyone’s face this Turkey Day! Join Charlie Brown, Peppermint Patty, Snoopy, and the rest of the Peanuts gang as they celebrate Thanksgiving with ice cream sundaes, buttered toast, and jelly beans. Good grief!

 

1) Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987)

Nothing is worse than traveling during the holidays. In this film, Neal Page (Steve Martin) struggles to get home to Chicago to spend Thanksgiving with his family. Along his 3-day journey, he (reluctantly) teams up with Del Griffith (the late John Candy), an annoying, messy, shower curtain ring salesman. Martin and Candy are a legendary comedic-duo in this hilarious Thanksgiving classic, arguably the best Thanksgiving film to date!

 

We hope you enjoyed our top 5 films to watch on Thanksgiving. From Blackfire Research, have a wonderful, restful Thanksgiving and start to the holiday season!

Meet Google Home Mini and Google Home Max

Meet Google Home Mini and Google Home Max

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At their recent hardware event, Google announced two new additions to their smart speaker agenda, both of which are ready to take on the ever-increasing number of competitors in the field. Say hello to the Google Home Mini and the Google Home Max.

 

The Google Home Mini has the same functionality as the original Google Home, but at a fraction of the size (and cost). With voice command, you can ask Google Assistant to stream music, control your smart home, check your calendar, and search the internet. The Mini is nearly 4 inches in diameter (roughly the size of a hockey puck), with the top portion covered in fabric, which is available in three colors: chalk, charcoal, and coral. The fabric hides the speaker (1.5-inches) and a far-field voice-recognition microphone. The design is pretty simple and sleek (although as a cat-parent, I wonder how much hair that fabric covering will collect over time). The Mini is a direct response (and a direct competitor) to the Amazon Echo Dot, the cheaper, more popular version of Amazon’s flagship Echo smart speaker. Will The Mini overtake Echo Dot as the most popular pint-sized smart speaker? According to some reviews, The Google Home Mini certainly sounds better than the Echo Dot (it boast 360 degree sound with a 40mm driver), but in overall functionality, there isn’t much of a difference between the two. At $49, the Mini is the cheapest smart speaker option currently on the market.

 

The biggest announcement of the day, however, belonged to the introduction of Google Home Max, a premium version of the Google Home smart speaker designed to compete against Apple’s HomePod and Sonos. The Home Max is a stereo speaker that runs Google Assitant and looks quite similar to the Sonos Play:5 speaker. The speaker is designed to intelligently adjust audio depending on a user’s surroundings using AI (or what Google calls “Smart Sound”), similar to what Apple’s HomePod speaker does. The Max has two tweeters and two 4.5-inch woofers and the company has emphasized the speaker’s powerful bass. The Max supports multi-room audio via Chromecast Audio only, but supports many streaming services including Pandora, Spotify, and iHeartRadio. In terms of connectivity, the Home Max supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Chromecast. At roughly 12 pounds, this is by far the largest smart speaker on the market, and the priciest as well. The Google Home Max will set you back almost $400, but Google is giving away 12 months free of YouTube Music with every Home Max purchase. The speaker will be available in two colors: chalk and charcoal, and can be displayed both vertically or horizontally via an adjustable silicon base.

 

The real question is: will the Google Home Max sound as good as the company claims? The answer is, most likely, no. Smart speakers don’t have a very good track record when it comes to audio quality. That’s why many smart speaker owners look for alternative ways to playback their music, especially for multi-room. To achieve excellent wireless multi-room, or multi-device set ups, entertainment systems need greater reliability over standard Wi-Fi, more precise synchronization, and multichannel capabilities, which smart speakers like Google Home, and the Echo, lack.

 

The good news: Blackfire Research offers the most synchronous, reliable, and cost effective wireless solution on the market. We call it the Blackfire RED framework, and it can be embedded into premium wireless speakers and voice-activated smart speakers, creating a truly connected home smart entertainment system. Voice service solutions require a high performance, multi-room solution like the Blackfire RED framework, allowing for multiple devices to respond to voice commands simultaneously.

 

Combining individual entertainment systems to work together to create a truly connected smart home is non trivial – but with Blackfire RED, it can be done, and with stunning results. Blackfire RED can be integrated into a broad spectrum of high quality voice service applications, so the Blackfire connected smart home ecosystem has no limits.  

 

Harman Kardon, Pioneer, and Onkyo are leveraging Blackfire’s technology in over 100 new products this year alone. Join the Blackfire Revolution today!