A show attendee looks at Sony’s 4K Ultra HD TV at the Sony booth at the
International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, ON Tuesday. - APpic
By RYAN NAKASHIMA
LAS VEGAS: 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 her
digital hand was hovering over.
However, when she tried the same gestures on a menu of TV-watching
options, the TV didn’t respond well. When she tried to give a kind of sideways
wave - like Queen Elizabeth greeting her subjects - the page didn’t swipe to
the left as it should have.
The technology appeared less responsive compared with the Xbox 360′s Kinect
motion-control system, which seems to do a much better job at swiping through
menus.
Later, in a quiet, enclosed Samsung booth, the TV struggled to
comprehend voice commands.
The TV was asked, “find me a
movie with Tom Cruise”, and correctly
pulled up an online trailer of his latest movie, “Jack Reacher”.
The system was then asked to “find me dramas”.
The command “Number 3″ was given to choose the third option in the results, but the TV
instead started a new search and offered a range of viewing options for
“Sommersby”.
There are some safeguards in place so that the TV wouldn’t misinterpret
casual conversations or gestures as actual commands.
You’d need to press a button before giving a voice command, and you’d
need to stand still for a few seconds and raise one hand before an on-screen
cursor would appear for gesture commands.
Paul Gagnon, a TV analyst with research firm NPD Group, said these
technologies are still in their early days.
“Most interaction I’ve had with gesture and voice control … it’s not
real great right now,” he said.
“Right now, a lot of people in the industry are
just trying to explore the possibilities.”
The TV makers’ new interactive features fared better when they reverted
to the traditional remote control format, with some twists.
Samsung’s new remote has a touch-enabled track pad that swiped through
menus similar to smartphone screens on Android and Apple mobile devices.
Panasonic Corp. is also including a track pad and a microphone on its
new remote — though it faces similar challenges recognizing commands.
A voice
command for “Breaking Bad” on video brought up Google search results on a Web
browser, as opposed to opportunities to watch the show.
LG Electronics Inc.’s newest “Magic Remote” controller was incredibly
precise in directing where an on-screen pointer should be.
It uses Bluetooth wireless technology along with a gyroscope inside the
controller itself.
It worked even from a great distance or when facing in the
opposite direction.
LG’s voice command worked well in searching for programs on live TV,
Web video apps and even the broader Internet.
When an attendant pressed the voice input button and spoke into the
microphone on the controller asking for “Channel 5", one of items presented was
the Bing search results showing the website of the Channel 5 TV broadcaster in
Las Vegas.
When asked for “The Dark Knight Rises,” the TV showed that it was
available for rental or purchase on-demand through the Vudu online video app
and brought up that app on the TV.
Another feature demonstrated on an LG TV was a way to mirror what’s on
your smartphone or tablet with the TV.
Using what’s known as “near-field
communications,” an attendant touched his Android phone to a kind of sticky pad
that was stuck onto the TV stand.
After interacting with the chip inside the
pad, the phone was paired with the TV.
The phone then brought up two arrows, one for “Phone to TV” and the
other “TV to Phone”.
By swiping up for “Phone to TV", whatever was on the phone then showed
up on the big screen.
Swiping the other way brought out a set of controls for
using the phone like a remote control. - AP
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