What are my consumer rights when a smart appliance is remotely downgraded?

powerful_Rogue

Grumpy_chap said:

I was just proceeding through my Alexa setting looking for how to do something I've not worked out yet, when I stumbled across something that made me think of this thread.

In Alexa, follow this:
 - More 
 - Settings
 - Device Settings
 - "+" sign
then three options pop up at the bottom, the third reads "Combine speakers set up multi-room music, a home cinema or a stereo pair."

I don't have any speakers to do that with but if the OP's speakers will work with Alexa, can this function not do what the OP wants?  Assuming the OP has Alexa.  OR, if the OP has a different hub, it may have the same kind of feature built in.

These are Google speakers. The issue isn't creating multi room music, it's controlling the volume of all the multi room devices at once via the app.

Jenni_D

I have 2x Echo Dot speakers. The instructions quoted above allowed me to play on both speakers. As they are in different rooms I tried the volume change command ... it seemed to work on both when I did it from one Dot, but not from the other. (Maybe when I did it at the one that worked the other one heard the command at the same time - I don't know).

MattMattMattUK

RogerBareford said:

But personally i think this is a stupid patent as it seems an obvious feature that most people would want any group of speakers in the same room to be the same volume so it's not exactly a unique idea that should be protected.

Many patents are granted on rather spurious grounds, when you look at the fact that many other manufacturers actually had to right Apple being granted a patent for a phone being rectangular, with a screen that took up most of one side, you realise how broken huge parts of the patent system actually are.