Navvo, led by former Best Buy executive Wade Fenn,...
Navvo, led by former Best Buy executive Wade Fenn, launched the Voco voice-controlled wireless multi-zone media system at CES. The $399 all-in-one media system streams music and 1080p video over Wi-Fi to V-Zone music receivers ($299 each) and V-Zone+ music…
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and video receivers ($399 each), due to ship later this month from the company website, said Matthew Juaire, director-marketing and sales. The system is due in February, he said, and the company is looking for high-end distribution through CEDIA-level dealers and specialty AV dealers at CES. Navvo demonstrated its Android-based solution at CEDIA Expo but quickly discovered it needed to be Apple-compatible for the specialty market and has brought its iPhone app to CES, Juaire said. An iPad version is in the works, he said. Voco apps allow users to search for and stream music from Android and Apple smart devices, computers, and online services, Juaire said, but they don’t enable voice control for commands such as channel changes or volume “because people don’t want to repeat volume up, volume up, volume up,” he told us. Instead the voice control is designed to simplify the search process when sorting through large volumes of music and videos, he said. He compared the speed of saying the title of an album, artist or track with plugging in a title using a remote control on a smart TV or set-top box to search for an artist’s name, which he called “10-year-old technology.” He wouldn’t say which voice recognition technology the company uses. Each Voco device has an integrated music server that allows music streaming directly from iPods, MP3 players and USB drives, according to literature, and Juaire said the company was showing streaming video from a smartphone off-site in Las Vegas. Voco is targeting a market occupied in various iterations by Sonos, Logitech, B&W, Roku, Sony, Bose and NuVo. Voice control, and having both audio and video streaming, set Voco apart, Juaire said. The right distribution is also important, he said, noting that Sonos “has struggled” with its distribution through mass-market retailer Target. Voco wants to sell through dealers that offer “handholding” to customers, he said.