Watch What You Shout At the TV - It May Be Able to Hear You
- Posted: Oct 26, 2010 at 1:55 AM
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- 2 Comments
As I get older, I find myself shouting more and more at the TV, a bit like I remember my dad doing when I was a kid. Sure, we’re all tempted to yell when watching our favourite team play, or rather, lose on TV but I’ll commentate on the news, dramas, comedies, you name it. Fun for me, but drives my family mad, I’m sure.
Wouldn’t it be great if this need to continually converse with the TV could be put to good use? Perhaps Amulet’s new voice controlled remote for Windows Media Center could be the answer? It has a built in microphone which relays your commands over to the PC to control your entertainment. You can select the TV channels you want to watch (“Watch NBC”), or Music to play ("Play U2”), ask the remote what song is playing and get an audio response, and even set TV Programmes to record (“Record ABC Next Tuesday at 7 PM”) all through natural language.
According to the company, the remote can sense when you’re talking to it, rather than chatting with friends and family, but don’t worry, it won’t feel ignored. Pick the remote up, it listens, lower it, and it stops – simple.
Amulet Remote Voice Remote for Media Center works with Windows 7 and Windows Vista Media Center and is shipping now. For more, check out Ian Dixon’s unboxing and review over on You Tube.
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Love the premise behind this, it really minimizes the need for menu navigation so you can enjoy content and not the menu UI so much. I might be way off, but I believe they are pretty much using the built-in speech capabilities in Windows 7. Finally someone has a real voice application and included a voice other than Ana. The one thing I really wish it did like Kinect though, is detect who is speaking instead of having to say "I am {yourname}" to switch profiles.
It also has me thinking how I would sync speech profiles between other media center PCs. Something for the Live Mesh team? Frankly with Kinect coming out, Microsoft should be looking at voice profile syncing not only between PCs but also between XBox, PC and Phone.
Thanks for mentioning us!
We have a button on the remote to switch profiles, or you can speak. There is of course a slight catch 22 scenario with trying to switch profile via voice. We've got a plan for auto profile switching but it didn't make it to the initial release.
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