I bit the privacy bullet and got an Echo for my home theater. It&#x27;s nice, but there is a mountain of unrecognized value because of Amazon&#x27;s desire to control everything.<p>As a for instance, it would be nice if keyword enablement could mute the stereo. It&#x27;d be nice to Chromecast audio to it. It&#x27;d be nice if I could use it to play things on a fire stick.<p>If it really wanted to be a device of the future, it would link to other Echoes in the house, allowed for intercom, and localized audio tracking.<p>Some of these things will either come or never see the light of day because Amazon hates interacting with other companies (see: Android).<p>I&#x27;m waiting for an open source alternative...