Hello, Dave, Can I Help You Find a Channel?

Last year, TV manufacturers introduced sets with built-in gesture and voice controls. The interfaces were clunky and felt stapled on?both journalists and customers responded with an enthusiastic "huh?" It's easy to see why TV makers would conclude that gesture and voice have a natural place in the television user interface, after all, TV menus are getting more and more complicated as "smart sets" try to do more and more. Plus, Microsoft's Xbox 360 accessory, Kinect, showed that people really can get excited about gestural interfaces. But the Kinect shines primarily because of its value as a gaming device. But do people really want to talk to their TVs and wave their hands around just to change the channel?

LG, Panasonic, and Samsung think so. All three companies today unveiled improved voice controls for their 2013 TVs, and LG and Samsung are showing off fine-tuned gesture control (with LG sets, you can just point at menu items on screen). All manufacturers are also showing off linked-screen experiences with smartphones and tablets?evolutions of the smartphone remote control apps that have been percolating up for some time now. Panasonic and Samsung set also have built-in cameras that can recognize individual users and customize the experience to them. But none of these manufacturers seem to be suggesting that the remote is going away. In fact, all three manufacturers do voice recognition through the remote to improve microphone sensitivity. So the question becomes, if you've got to have the remote nearby to use voice control, why not just pick up the remote and use that?

The answer, as far as I can tell, is that "smart TVs" are evolving so fast that manufacturers simply have no idea how consumers are going to want to interact with these things, so they are pretty much putting every possible option on the table?remote, voice, phone, gestures, what have you. If modern TVs are going to offer up an Internet's-worth of content, then it's likely that a couple of buttons on a standard remote aren't going to cut it. And, in all honesty, the new systems do seem to work better and more intuitively than the voice and gesture controls on the first-gen sets.

Still, there's a big difference between the Kinect's primary function of jump-around gaming and the typical lean-back TV-watching experience. Unlike a gaming interface, a TV interface is supposed to find you what you want, then get out of the way and let you watch it. We haven't had the opportunity to test the new sets in a real living room environment, but if menus and options pop up every time a user raises his hand to scratch his nose, then the UI will be far more frustrating than useful. Plus, as voice and gesture controls proliferate, I can imagine different system's controls crashing into each other?when you're playing Kinect with one of these TVs, does the TV know enough to automatically stop responding to your gestural commands?

There's also a question of user comfort. How much do we want our TVs paying attention to us? Always-on facial recognition built-into your TV means that the device is literally constantly watching you. Samsung's new TVs also pay attention to your viewing habits and use predictive analysis to suggest other programs you might like. Panasonic's new TVs have a partnership with the HSN shopping network to allow you to purchase items right through your TV. Clever, for sure, but that sort of highly personalized data collection in your living room is potentially marketing gold. It's one thing to have my TV knowing who I am and what I want, it's another to have it selling that info on behalf of its maker. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but the more my TV gets to know me, the more likely I am to cover up its camera with masking tape.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/home-theater/hello-dave-can-i-help-you-find-a-channel-14952165?src=rss

Tsunami Lil Reese Hurricane Sandy Nyc aapl Saanvi Venna vikings Colin Powell