Just to confirm with complete certainty if anyone outside of US/UK is thinking of buying these - hold off for now. As described above it's now not possible to set to an address outside of the US or UK. You are still able to set your timezone which at least helps with the correct time, but any other local features are out the question. No cinema listings, nearby restaurants and most importantly "Alexa, what's the weather today?" will answer incorrectly.
I know they are not selling these devices outside the US/UK for a reason, but given the data sources they are using for the information - all of them support pretty much every country.
Our office now has 3 dumb echos. I wish I had seen this thread earlier ;-)
When Echo first came out in the US two years ago, there were no cinema listings either. And you can't even get an answer for where the nearest McDonalds is located. I remember when I first got the Echo two years ago, I was severely disappointed as I thought I could ask things like "What time does Pizza Hut open?" There was no support for smart switches either. I had several Wemo switches already before I got the Echo. All these little things that I thought it could do, it didn't do. Back then, getting an Echo was by invitation only. I had two invitations and the waiting list was extremely long. Because I was so disappointed in the beginning, I cancelled my order for the second one. After months and months of waiting, then seeing new features and improvements, I began to appreciate what the Echo can do. But by then, demand for the Echo had exploded. The waiting list was something 6 months. (There are probably some posts in this forum about how long people were waiting for their Echos). I ended up paying a large sum of money to get one quickly from Ebay. Now I have a total of 3 Echos, 1 Tap, and 6 Dots. I'm happy with them all.
The benefit to the UK folks is that you already know what the US Echo can do. It's just a matter of time for those missing features to be added to the UK Echos. Cinema listings? It'll be there soon. Address and operating hours of local businesses? It's coming. IMDB? Very soon. IFTTT? You bet!
If you feel mislead or disappointed, just remember that the US folks had to wait a lot longer than you before these features came out. And even as we waited, there was no official word on whether something was going to be supported. It was just all rumors. Everyone hoped Wemo, IFTTT, Nest, and other services/devices would be supported. And that's all it was, just hope that Amazon would do something. Amazon never said anything until the day the new firmware was released. Similarly to this week's Logitech Harmony announcement. Amazon made no official announcement until the day it was released.
In case you're interested, I've located the thread where we talked about how the waiting list was.
http://www.echotalk.org/index.php/topic,9.0.htmlThe original post was from Jan 2015. At that time, 56% of respondents indicated that they were expecting to receive their Echo in May 2015 or later. And that was only if you were one of the lucky ones to get the invitation. The Echo was not available to the general public.