I mean, honestly. iTV. That’s just what I’m calling Apple’s television until someone tells me it’s named something else. Anyway, last week we told you that Sharp seems to be gearing up to make components for the device, according to an analyst. The Guardian in England extrapolates that notion a bit further and says that iTV could be gesture enabled. A sort of Kinect TV under an Apple design and using everyone’s favorite new robot helper, Siri.
In October the US patent office published a filing by Apple for “real time video process control using gestures”, which describes using infrared, motion and other sensors to read the user’s movements. Gestures could edit video, or “throw” it from one device to another, say to transfer a film from a mobile phone to a bigger screen.
The patents mention facial recognition, to tag individuals within videos so that home videos can be grouped according to who features in them. This autumn the iPhone was updated with a highly accurate voice control application called Siri, and some observers believe it will feature on the TV sets.
Also from the same article, skepticism about whether this would be a good thing:
Technology researcher Benedict Evans at Enders Analysis was sceptical about revolutionary an iTV could be. He said that accidental gestures could disrupt viewing, adding: “It would be like sitting in Sothebys and desperately not moving so you don’t accidentally make a bid for £10m.”
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