Do you want voice and gesture control over your TV without buying a new smart TV from Samsung or LG? Remoteless TV control is coming this year in the form of HAL.
If HAL sounds ominously familiar, that’s because it’s the name of the sociopath computer system in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The new HAL also goes by the name of WhyRemote (I haven’t figured this one out yet). It combines online apps (like Netflix, Pandora and Angry Birds) with smart internet search features, personal assistant features (schedules, reminders, weather alerts…) and voice and gesture control. It even includes facial recognition (which can be used as a parental control feature).
Now there’s not much information available about it. It will be officially unveiled next week at the Consumer Electronics Show. So far it looks like a speaker base, with speaker divers built in, a few USB and HDMI inputs, the ability the change channels on your set-top-box and presumably Wi-Fi and a web cam.
You can watch a video of it in action here.
You can already do most of those things and more with a Voicepod and a Control4 system.
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