It’s now possible to get your videos from your local weather news station via an Echo Show device. All you need to do is invoke the right keyphrase and you shall be given the content you seek.
According to The Verge, the new feature is live right now on a handful of Echo Show devices. This includes the Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and Fire TV Omni QLED series devices. It’s not currently available on the Echo Show 5 but it is reportedly be rolling out to them. So if you own an Echo Show 5 you might start seeing it pop up as an available feature to use.
Amazon has partnered with local news channels to add this to its Echo Show displays, and all videos that can pop up are the most recent of what’s available. So you shouldn’t be getting any outdated information from what you may watch. There’s one big caveat though. And that’s the number of supported cities.
Echo Show will surface local weather news videos from 15 cities
Being able to watch local weather news videos on your smart display definitely sounds like a useful feature to have. Especially since not everyone wants to sit through an entire news broadcast. Assuming you even still have cable.
You also don’t have to go through the trouble of searching for these videos on local news channels online. Alexa will simply find them for you. The one downside is that this feature is only available for supported cities, which at this point includes just 15 different cities across the US.
This includes New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Phoenix, Boston, Washington D.C, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Milwaukee, Fresno, Omaha, Toledo, and San Antonio. Amazon does plan to expand the list of supported cities but doesn’t mention when or where you’ll see this available next.
If you live in one of the supported cities, all you have to do is say “Alexa, what’s the weather?” And you’ll get the forecast along with some videos you can tap to play. If you have an Echo Show but don’t live in a supported city, you can still try the feature out. You just need to mention the city when asking about the weather.