HTPCs will soon have motion sensors

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HTPCs will soon have motion sensors

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This is what i've been talkin about for a while now!!  Kinect + WMC = total Awesomeness 

YES PLEASE!!!

Werdlez

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I'm not a fan of gesture control, but I have to admit that looks really cool.

Senior Editor | @babgvant

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It does look cool but I have a feeling I would use it for a couple days and never again.  At least as a remote.  Obviously this is much easier to use than a Wiimote but I set that up for a couple days as a Media Center remote....meh.

Mikinho | Missing Remote | Windows Entertainment and Connected Home MVP

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If the controls are relatively simple and intuitive, I can see it working.  The biggest problem I see immediately is how the device will separate gestures intended to control the experience and normal gestures.

Senior Editor | @babgvant

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Not trying to figure out where my wife left the remote would be awesome.  But it also means that the remote is no longer the symbol of power it used to be.

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Imagine your children flailing about in front of the tv trying to steal channel changing control from each other....

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Considering we know that Kinect uses facial recognition to determine users, would it be so hard to implement a (remote) control user topology as well?  Or parental control based on users.

Just spinnin my wheels, but its possible.  Or what about a 'pass control' or 'take control' gesture?  Sounds fun...and potentially a bit annoying, but I'm willing to give her a go for sure!  Laughing out loud

Werdlez

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nizbot wrote:

Considering we know that Kinect uses facial recognition to determine users, would it be so hard to implement a (remote) control user topology as well?  Or parental control based on users.

Just spinnin my wheels, but its possible.  Or what about a 'pass control' or 'take control' gesture?  Sounds fun...and potentially a bit annoying, but I'm willing to give her a go for sure!  Laughing out loud

I agree it sounds fun and I think voice mixed with gestures will eventually be the future of remotes.  I'm just skeptical that it will happen in the next couple years.

Mikinho | Missing Remote | Windows Entertainment and Connected Home MVP

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Keeping my arm outstretched to scroll through multiple terabytes of movies and/or TV shows is going to really tire out my arm.  I just don't see gestures taking off.  I think voice control is more likely to catch on, but we're going to be in big trouble when someone on TV says to dial 911!

Also, how the hell did that guy type "action thriller" on that onscreen keyboard that fast?  Hitting the right keys is going to be tough enough, but actually trying to do it fast is going to drive people insane!

BTW...  anyone else notice that damn soccer ball on YouTube's videos?

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Skirge01 wrote:

BTW...  anyone else notice that damn soccer ball on YouTube's videos?

There was already such a craze of people making videos with vuvuzelas edited in (I've seen Lord of the Rings spoofs, Invictus, and many others) that youtube just finally jumped on the craze themselves and gave you the option to do it to any video. It cracks me up. Heheh World Cup silliness.

I agree that people won't want to keep their arms outstretched, but if kinect is any indication then you don't really have to hold your arm out like that. This video just seems to be exaggerating it for the sake of showing you. I think more people are going to be using the voice control aspect. As for worrying about the TV dialog triggering it (your 911 scenerio) that shouldn't be an issue if it's anything like how kinect is doing it. You have to say "xbox, pause" or whatever. So unless the dialog actually says xbox and a command, you're fine. And it looks like MS will be beefing up the parental control based on users when kinect comes out.

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Skirge01 wrote:

Keeping my arm outstretched to scroll through multiple terabytes of movies and/or TV shows is going to really tire out my arm.  I just don't see gestures taking off.  I think voice control is more likely to catch on, but we're going to be in big trouble when someone on TV says to dial 911!

I just don't see yelling "Down, Down, Down" for 3 minutes enjoyable either while looking for a show to watch.

HTPC addict

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I'll bet that all of you nay-sayers scoffed at the Clapper too  Shock

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Lothar wrote:

Skirge01 wrote:

Keeping my arm outstretched to scroll through multiple terabytes of movies and/or TV shows is going to really tire out my arm.  I just don't see gestures taking off.  I think voice control is more likely to catch on, but we're going to be in big trouble when someone on TV says to dial 911!

I just don't see yelling "Down, Down, Down" for 3 minutes enjoyable either while looking for a show to watch.

LOL!  True enough.  But, I was thinking more along the lines of "Search Sci-Fi M movies" and then seeing a wall of videos a la Sage Movie Wall.

@LowTech:  I certainly did scoff at the clapper!  I also have yet to meet anyone who owns or owned one.

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Lothar wrote:

I just don't see yelling "Down, Down, Down" for 3 minutes enjoyable either while looking for a show to watch.

While yelling "Down, Down, Down" may not be  enjoyable or practical, saying "Computer Recordings" to jump to  your list of recordings, or "Computer: Goto HBO" might be Smile

I've been planning on trying to play around with the Speech Recognition in Win7 for the last couple of weeks to do just this.  It makes much more sense to me to do this than to try and use a remote control with a limited button capacity and incorrect button labels or a touchscreen you have to look at to accomplish the same things.

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Just a quick update for anyone interested. 

I was able to add voice control to my htpc this weekend and it really is fun.  I'm definitely not a programmer but was able to add a few basic commands to control my x10 lights and to create a few jump targets within SageTV.  Currently all commands are hard coded but as I learn I hope to create a command file than can be read to create the commands and actions from and possibly even parse the intelliremote profile files to create them automatically.

In order to do this I used visual studio express 2010 (vb.net), the built in web server control of intelliremote, and the microphone built into a webcam.  If anyone is interested I'd be more than happy to write up how I did it and share the small bit of code I've written (disclaimer:  I am not a programmer so my code is most likely awful at best).

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