Smart TVs get smarter, by just a little bit
In the not-so-distant future, couch potatoes will be waving, pointing, swiping and tapping to make their TVs react, kind of like what Tom Cruise did in the 2002 movie ``Minority Report.'' That's the vision of TV manufacturers as they show off ``smart TVs.''
The sets will recognize who's watching and will try to guess what viewers want to see. They'll respond to more natural speech and will connect with your smartphone in a single touch.
The idea is to make TV watching easier and more pleasant as viewers are confronted with more and more choices _ from the hundreds of live TV channels from the cable or satellite provider to online video services such as Netflix Inc., Hulu and Apple's iTunes. A traditional remote control that lets you flip through channels one at a time suddenly seems inadequate.
At a speech this week, Samsung President Boo-Keun Yoon said the company was developing ``TVs that have the power to create the ultimate lean-back experience.''
But don't worry about ``Big Brother'' looking back at you. Manufacturers such as Samsung Electronics Co. will allow motion-capturing cameras to be pointed away.
Gesture recognition still has a long ways to go, and in some demonstrations at this week's International CES show in Las Vegas, voice commands got lost in translation.
At a crowded Samsung booth, one attendant demonstrated how hand gestures were used to play simple kids' games. Raising her hand brought up an on-screen cursor. Grasping the air was equivalent to clicking on what
Be the first to comment.
