What’s the catch?
He's not taking about true automation, he's only talking about remote control, HE is automation, all the speakers he is taking about are voice control, while yes I use voice a bit, it's only for turning TV on for things that are to random.
But it would be good it you could go from zigbee to Bluetooth
But most of those hubs do automation. Atleast HomeKit does.
Certain models of Alexa (e.g. Echo Plus) talk directly to Zigbee devices too, and Alexa has some rudimentary automation capabilities. So I'm wondering (after viewing the video) what is so earth shattering here?
Mainly HomeKit and you won’t need a zigbee device specifically. Fire tv, regular echos older gen Apple TV’s will be hubs
I'll pass for now. Don't really fancy changing all my devices so it can support chip/matter/thread or whatever they are calling it this week. 
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There is no way your Wifi router is going to be as good as something like a Hubitat, or any hub for that matter (no pun intended).
People sure are crazy for Thread/Matter, and for some reason think it is a desirable thing to run on your internet router. They somehow think your router isn't a hub, so they are "saving" that expense. Except you now need a whole mesh router $$$ system to handle traffic.
Appletv not router
You can do some things through Apple Homekit, Google Nest, and Amazon Echo devices. However, none are going to be as powerful or as flexible as what you can do with Hubitat. The general populace is never going to adopt Hubitat as they cannot deal with the complexity that comes with the power and flexibility. For those that want simplicity, Zigbee direct may be suitable. For for those who want a more powerful tool, there is Hubitat.
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Agree. As far as raw processing power how does a Hubitat compare to an Apple TV
I think there is some misunderstanding above; Zigbee Direct, which I had never heard of before this video, is apparently a way to communicate with Zigbee devices using Bluetooth LE, so your phone (or Bluetooth smart speaker, which is probably all of them--not necessarily ones with a Zigbee coordinator built in) can theoretically communicate directly with Zigbee devices--as long as one of them can speak both (like the new Hue bulbs--maybe they knew something back then we didn't!). I still don't see how this really fits in with automation--you need something to handle that, which certainly could be smart speaker if it were beefed up enough to handle that (some sort of actual automation engine and, for my needs, not something that requires the Internet; HomeKit is promising but limited in actual capabilities, and Alexa is both limited and cloud-dependent).
Oh, and somehing that will always be at your house--your phone can't very well do that when you take it with you when you leave home. I don't understand the obession with wanting to eliminate the hub entirely, and contrary to his video, I don't see the CSA (former Zigbee Alliance) saying no hubs, just "with fewer hubs" (exact words from the page I linked to above). But again, sure, a smart speaker could do that if it actually had the capabilities required. None I'm aware of now really do, and unless voice control is one of your goals, there's also no reason you should need one for home automation. But even if that's what you use...isn't it the hub now? 
It just happens to server another purpose, too.
But again, I had never heard of it until now, so I might be missing something. I guess it's mostly, for me, that an actual hub seems more appealing to me now than any of these alternatives in their current form (and in any form I can see most manufacturers actually doing in the future...ha).
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About 15 years ago I had an idea how to improve home automation.
At that time X10 was popular and Insteon showed up as an X10 replacement.
In short my idea was to build set of smart devices with built-in web servers.
Central hub was not considered. Instead each device spouse to have individual RM.
This RM should listen to all network messages and use them as a triggers.
This is very simplified description but the whole idea was to decentralize home automation.
What's the catch, you say? Watching a nearly 9 minute long video that leaves you exactly where you began ......
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Exactly! My take was that contrary to the click-baity title and the "seems to good to be true", I came away with "Why is he (the guy that made the video) thinking this is so earth shattering if it isn't going to do anything anyone really wants it to do?".
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