A future without remote controls | Hacker News Reader

A future without remote controls

ottawacitizen.com

I've wondered, ever since I was a kid and remote controls first became prevalent, why TVs and such aren't voice controlled. Of course, I'm not a channel surfer; with a voice system, my wife would talk herself hoarse and still not be able to change channels nearly fast enough.

Side rant: I hate how most devices now have few/no controls on the unit and require the remote to use them fully. Generally, I'll get up and walk over to them before I'll look for a misplaced remote.

Viewer: Channel thirty.

TV: 'Channel dirty' is not a recognized command.

Viewer: Not dirty, thirty!

TV: 'Not dirty, dirty' is not a recognized command.

Viewer: Where's that damned remote?

I can't imagine a system like this for a TV that doesn't read false positives during normal living room activity.

One way that we get around false triggers is by using some sort of "push-to-gesture" system. This would tell the recognition component that it is time to pay attention. I could imagine using some simpler heuristic that determines if the user is squared off at or at least facing the TV before accepting any gestures.

That's what I was thinking. For example if it recognized that you were holding up two fingers in a "V" for victory it would show a little on-screen message (e.g. "Ready for input"). I'd love to be able to give a middle finger salute to my TV and have it understand that I NEVER want to see this program again.

Same here. Anyone know if and how they handle that? Seems like a major problem that'd prevent this sort of thing from working well.

I for one think gestures are overrated, and that includes OS X and iPhone. I can remember pinch to zoom and swipe to scroll - that's it. There is no way to even guess what else might be available. Certainly I don't want to memorize a couple of gestures just to be able to operate my TV.

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