WHDI Reviews – Wireless HDTV News

Samsung UN60D8000 60-Inch 1080p 240 Hz 3D LED HDTV (Silver)

Samsung announced their new line of voice and gestured controlled smart TV’s this week at CES 2012 in Las Vegas, USA. These TV’s will come with special microphones and cameras in order to listen to and see the user and interpret their speech and gestures as commands. In order to remain competitive, LG Electronics announced a similar model, which will have a special remote that has a microphone embedded in it. The user will be able to speak in to the microphone in order to input text on screen to update a twitter account or to make searches. LG’s model however, won’t allow the user to perform other functions such as channel changing and selecting programs. Samsung’s model on the other hand would be able to recognize hand gestures and move the onscreen cursor and also launch apps.

These TVs are amongst the many smart TVs and web connected TV models that are being shown at the CES exhibition floor right now.

The show also features Google’s attempt to get in to the living room as well by making software for these TVs to use. The search giant announced its partners for the Google TV project just ahead of CES and there are models on display right now that show off Google TV. Sony has so far been the most visible supported who has made an announcement saying that they will be releasing a blu-ray player with Google software in it. This player will also come with a remote that has a microphone in it for voice searches.

According to industry experts, there are some major interface challenges to overcome before Smart TVs like the one from Samsung become mainstream in the market. Even though they have been around since as early as 2008, they have not taken off mainly because it is very hard to navigate the Internet with a conventional TV remote. And this is not for dearth of companies trying to overcome the barrier also.

LG had already introduced a motion sensitive remote called “Magic Wand” that could used the same way Wii controllers are used. Now the company is going one step further and introducing a Kinect style 3D camera that sits on top of the TV and watches the user for gestures. This will allow them to control the onscreen cursor with their hands to match up to .Samsung

The latest innovations in controller-less interfaces such as the Kinect are making experts hopeful about 2012. This year might just end up being the year when the smart TV finally took off. Google certainly hopes it will as the company renews its effort to spread its presence across to the living room as well.

In the meantime, Samsung’s TV will be using its camera to try and recognize which user is in front at the moment. It will then use this data to bring up that user’s personal ‘hub’ of applications. I wonder what it will do when the whole family joins in.

Another problem that is hold smart TVs back is that the TVs themselves do not have the source of the content. It is the set top box used on top of the TV that gets most of the interaction from the user as a result of this. This is why there’s innovation happening in that area as well.