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Television Input Devices Microsoft XBox (Games) Games

What Kinect Could Be, But Probably Won't 143

Posted by Soulskill from the good-for-gaming-heyoooo dept.
An opinion piece at CNN looks at Microsoft's Xbox Kinect, praising the system's capabilities not for gaming, but for what it does to the video viewing experience. "The idea of being able to ditch your table full of remote controls and just use your hands and voice to interact with the TV is compelling. It's much nicer than QWERTY keyboards, which are a terrible idea in the living room. It's also better than Wii-like remote controls, or even using an iPad or smartphone as your TV remote, a feature that cable companies are increasingly rolling out." The problem, as they see it, is Microsoft's inability to actually bring this into common usage for regular television viewing. "It seems like the company is tied too much to the Xbox's substantial gaming revenue to split the Xbox TV stuff off as a separate product — even though there's a huge population of non-gamers who probably have no interest in buying an Xbox." Perhaps this is something that can be addressed by others when the Kinect SDK is released.
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What Kinect Could Be, But Probably Won't More

What Kinect Could Be, But Probably Won't

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  • The very few times... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SilasMortimer ( 1612867 ) <pandarsson@gmail.com> on Sunday April 24, 2011 @04:32AM (#35919788) Journal
    ...that Microsoft comes up with something very cool on its own (i.e., without buying someone else's product and rebranding it), they have this frustrating tendency to screw it up with unimaginative business practices. In this instance, I give it at most two years before someone comes out with a similar product that will immediately charge to the lead in the market. At that point, Microsoft will try to catch up and that's what they'll be doing all the way up to the point where they discontinue the product. Their reliance on product limitations as a business practice may have helped them in the early years, but it's been a long time since it's been of any benefit.

    I'm not a fan of Microsoft (though they make THE best keyboard with their Natural Ergonomic 4000), but I can only think that this is seriously frustrating for people who work there.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by pasv ( 755179 )
      IMHO: Microsoft has been failing at mobile markets, it has openly stated that it doesn't see value in *pad/*tablet because it can't see it as being an irreplaceable entity. Well they jumped on the bandwagon too little and too late and now they have a real chance to gain power in new markets to make up for it. It's not news that the desktop market is still widely dominated by them but what will become evident (if isn't already blaringly obvious) is that the desktop is soon to see extinction. I don't mean tha

      • Hmm..... I thought one read slashdot via a desktop machine because one's job necessitated being seated in front of desktop machine for 12 hours a day.

        • People at work think I'm crazy, but they also know when I'm reading /. because I'll be flailing my arms like crazy because I use my Kinect to scroll and type.

      • Ah the old desktop extintction theory. People and companies can't even get off IE6 and you expect them to change direction and use "Cloud" services. And by the way way wasn't the Cloud called hosted services just a few years ago? MS is a big software company that can't just turn on a dime and enter into a whole new product line. A new product line that is more hardware than software focused. Apple has always targeted hardware and software but MS targeted software on commodity hardware which meant limited in

    • Wrong.

      MS is milking the Xbox exactly the way they should.

      If they spin off an Xbox TV console, they will be diluting the Xbox brand. In marketing, brand dilution = death.

      • No, they could just issue the next gen Xbox that does exactly what Google TV does. The Xbox brand would just mean everything on your TV, from TV to Web to gaming to movies to personal desktops.

        And then Google TV would probably just beat it in the market with the far better integration with the Internet by the far more open platform.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          And then Google TV would probably just beat it in the market with the far better integration with the Internet

          Not as long as all major TV networks continue to block access from Google TV devices.

    • I'm not a fan of Microsoft (though they make THE best keyboard with their Natural Ergonomic 4000),

      And it only took them how many years to make the "Natural" keyboards more or less right? The original had the home row keys higher than the surrounding keys, forcing your finger to actually move farther than on a normal keyboard. Besides, this is the best keyboard. [kinesis-ergo.com]

      • Those Kinesis keyboards look pretty damn awesome and I suppose they're the best if you can budget it, but when you take price into account, I still have to give it to the Microsoft one. And I know, it took them a long time to get to it, but it's there and it's good and it's cheap and the next time I'm in the market, it'll be that one that I compare others to.
    • For me, the most desireable remote control would be via by touch-screen smartphone. It's small, can use touchscreen gestures, (or motion gestures if you wished), has a usable touchscreen keyboard (for searching and direct channel access), and is a usable size. If the damn thing had an IR transmitter, it would be perfect. I used to use my Palm Treo for this, but its IR transmitter was very poor.

      • For me, the most desireable remote control would be via by touch-screen smartphone. It's small, can use touchscreen gestures, (or motion gestures if you wished), has a usable touchscreen keyboard (for searching and direct channel access), and is a usable size. If the damn thing had an IR transmitter, it would be perfect. I used to use my Palm Treo for this, but its IR transmitter was very poor.

        Saint Steve has your every desire [apple.com] satisfied. Well, some of them, anyway.

  • Explain to me... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Servaas ( 1050156 ) <captivayay@NOSpAm.hotmail.com> on Sunday April 24, 2011 @04:37AM (#35919814)
    How would the Kinect be used as a TV remote replacment? Swipe left for down channel, right for next? Up for volume up and down for volume down? Ok now I want to jump from channel 34 to 21, what swipe gesture would I use for that? How about channel info? Will there be Kinect gesture classes in our children's school years? I hear people talking about the Kinect like its the second coming but other then specific problems that could be addresed by it for the most part its the child like idea of of having a Minority Report interface that has people excited.
    • Presumably al non-simple functions would be controlled by voice, but frankly, I'd hate that. Like you say, the whole Minority Report thing often gets people excited, but in the end, the classic solution is less intrusive and more accurate.

      • Re:Explain to me... (Score:5, Funny)

        by SilasMortimer ( 1612867 ) <pandarsson@gmail.com> on Sunday April 24, 2011 @05:22AM (#35919934) Journal
        I kind of like the idea. Particularly if I can specify what words are used for the commands.

        Firstly, I would name my entertainment unit Telebot. The command to power on would, of course, be "entertain me." Thus, to turn on my entertainment unit, I would say:

        "Telebot, entertain me!"

        And simply changing the channel is boring. I could go two ways on this: The command could be "transform to [number]" or "adjust your frequencies to channel [number]". Mute would have to be activated with "Telebot, silence!" and deactivated with "Telebot, you may proceed." All successful commands would be acknowledged with the OSD saying "Yes, Supreme Overlord" and unsuccessful commands would elicit "Does not compute", after which it would be properly contrite following some suitable punishment I have not thought up yet. The only trouble would be making it respond to an imperious tone and ignore all others.

        Man, I'd actually start watching TV again if I could do that.
        • I imagine every treckie would make the power-on command "On screen."

          • Would it respond each time after the 50th by showing a really good Jean-Luc Picard facepalm?

            • You could set the volume to 10*(n-1)%, where n is the number of words in the command, and the command must contain the string 'sound,' 'volume' or 'audio.' That way the more treknobabble you make up, the louder it gets. 'Mute audio' gets you silence. 'Activate sound system' gets you 10%. 'Sound system to low' for 20%. Right up to 'Initialse the multiaural projectors for enhanced signal transmission via atmospheric vibrations' to get full volume.

        • "Yes, Supreme Overlord" ... following some suitable punishment ... The only trouble would be making it respond to an imperious tone and ignore all others.

          Perhaps some sort of throne you have to sit on to issue Telebot commands? Or some cape pseudo-peripheral?

        • And naturally the un-undoable one;

          Telebot, MAX VOLUME.

          TELEBOT, OH GOD, OH GOD, LOWER THE VOLUME! WHY CAN'T YOU HEAR ME!?

          (Caps actually used to illustrate shouting, go figure.)

        • I know this is supposed to be joking, but I want this sooo bad now...

          "Telebot, you are dismissed!" - Powers off

          "Telebot, make me a sandwich!" - Tunes to the cooking channel

          "Telebot, make me laugh!" - Tunes to Comedy Central

          "Telebot, make me cry!" - Tunes to Fox News

          "Telebot, make it rain, bitch!" - Tunes to the Weather Channel

          "Telebot, hold!" - Pauses the DVR

          "Telebot, kill!" - Turns to Lifetime and stops responding to instructions

          "Telebot, where is/are my ____?" - Brings up a cool "scanning"

      • I hate voice controls, I've got a rather deep voice and when I'm using voice menus sometimes the phone system can't pick up my voice at all no matter how loudly I yell at the damned thing. Google seems to have done a lot better with whatever they're using on Android, but it still has issues.

        Voice recognition from across the room is even more complicated.

    • Re:Explain to me... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Mark Hood ( 1630 ) on Sunday April 24, 2011 @04:47AM (#35919846) Homepage

      I have the same problem - remembering the passage from 'Hitchhikers' talking about how buttons on equipment gave way to touch controls, then to gestures... Meaning you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same station.

      So either you have to accept that someone will change the channel every time they stretch (or throw their hands up in exasperation at a missed goal) or introduce a 'get the TV's attention' gesture. Yoo-hoo, I'm waving at you....

      I see they're talking about using voice too - so I guess it's that, but how are you going to turn the volume down when it can't hear you over the sound of the movie? Or when someone happens to speak the keyword in a show you're watching? (Which reminds me, if anyone had that 'clapper' thing, did it turn your lights off whenever the ad for it came on?)

      If someone gets it right, I'm all for it - but I just don't see it. 'Who wants a beer?' *hand goes up* *tv changes to Lifetime* *thirsty guy gets beaten*. I'll stick with my Harmony remote, to replace all the others - and I don't even need a webcam on 24/7 in my living room, with all the privacy implications that has.

      Mark

      PS We once had a TV at school which was had an ultrasonic remote (this was something that came out either before or in competition with IR). One of my classmates discovered that their sneezes were perfectly pitched to the 'change channel up' signal. Sadly it was hay-fever season, so they had to sit outside while we watched something about Henry VIII and chuckled uncontrollably whenever we remembered it.

      • Could be done. Something like tapping your hands together twice in succession to enable the controls, and have them revert to locked after ten seconds of no commands. But even then, it's got issues of viewing angles and placement that will mean it's impractical for many. My family TV, for example, would need a FOV of somewhere around a hundred degrees in order to cover all three of the sitting places - and one of those is often used while lying down.

      • Yes, because Kinect can't distinguish between highly specific hand gestures and cheering for a football game. It's just like 1970s ultrasonic TV remote technology. Typos make keyboards useless. Slippery joysticks prevent gaming. The mouse is too imprecise for drawing.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by sznupi ( 719324 )
        Commands being drown out by the sound of the movie is a non-issue; not when the listening device can get the "pure" movie audio and subtract it (and even when it can't, ambient noise cancellation works fine with few microphones)

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by grumling ( 94709 )

        How about a Twister interface: Left foot Yellow == channel up. Right hand blue + left hand green volume down, etc.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It could be used as enhanced voice command. Kinect has cameras and 3d detection, so it is possible so see that you are giving commands to the TV and not chatting with someone about the sport channel. If the resolution is enough it could read your lips to have even better voice recognition. It could even help disabled persons.

      Imagine you're on the phone, TV is getting louder you present you hand to the TV to mute it or even power it off. It could detect that everybody left the room and pause the movie. The i

      • Yeah, with the next step to pause the commercials if there's nobody watching it.

        Technology that can be turned against you will.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by drb226 ( 1938360 )

          pause the commercials if there's nobody watching it.

          It sounds way creepy, but it'll be standard in a decade or two...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sznupi ( 719324 )

        it could read your lips to have even better voice recognition

        You could even control TV while sitting comfortably in one of the Pods, together with your crew mate (the one carbon based & not in hibernation)

    • Most likely that way, but that can also be handled by your run-of-the-mill webcam with some machine vision, especially that most webcams also carry a mike. I don't really see how 3D vision can improve video playback experience...

    • This resembles TV Shop... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24, 2011 @05:02AM (#35919892)

      In commercials you always see how some ordinary thing is so very difficult and cubersome to do. You know... "Vacuuming under the sofa is so hard and the vacuum cleaner doesn't fit there well and you have to (*gasp*) kneel down and it still won't be perfectly clean... But if you buy Super Cleaner (TM) RIGHT NOW you'll...". At that point, every regular person should go "Excuse me? I've vacuumed under the sofa and it's not that difficult, really". The commercials are trying to create a need that doesn't exists because there is a product that has been designed to fulfill that need. This sounds similar.

      The reason why it's difficult to come up with a replacement for a remote is that there isn't any real need for that. Are the remotes really that hard to use? You pick one up. lay on the sofa and can do anything with a small finger gesture. I don't understand why they're trying to create need for a replacement with those very artificial sounding arguments. "It's hard to pick up the right remote"? Oh please...

      • In some cases it is hard. you can have 4-8 remotes to control your fancy tv/audio setup.

        what is really needed is a standard set of controlling codes for remotes. so you don't have to go through the often lengthy and wrong procedure of trying to teach a remote all the codes that it might need.

        a universal remote often sacrifces ease of use for features.

      • It *is* a hassle of keeping track of those five remotes for your TV, sound system, DVD, VCR and HTPC... If you've ever been part of a family, chances are you have to spend ten minutes looking for that dang DVD remote since some family member has put it in the most improbable place possible.

        But I feel the solution isn't gestures, but rather having a TV with a built-in harddrive and codecs so you have a single HTPC+screen.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Thing 1 ( 178996 )

          It *is* a hassle of keeping track of those five remotes for your TV, sound system, DVD, VCR and HTPC... If you've ever been part of a family, chances are you have to spend ten minutes looking for that dang DVD remote since some family member has put it in the most improbable place possible.

          We have a very low-tech solution: we bought a basket. All remotes live in the basket, the basket gets passed around. Done.

      • In commercials you always see how some ordinary thing is so very difficult and cubersome to do. You know... "Vacuuming under the sofa is so hard and the vacuum cleaner doesn't fit there well and you have to (*gasp*) kneel down and it still won't be perfectly clean... But if you buy Super Cleaner (TM) RIGHT NOW you'll...". At that point, every regular person should go "Excuse me? I've vacuumed under the sofa and it's not that difficult, really".

        This style of advertising seems to be much more common in the U.S (Maybe Canada but I've only spent a few hours there) than in Western Europe. Our advertisers tend not to treat their target audience like retards as that means that only retards will relate and buy their products.

    • Microphone in the kinect. Just speak "channel 34" or, even better, "CNN sports".

      Any further questions?

    • I don't see why a basic hand vocabulary of 5-20 gestures from American Sign Language couldn't be the global standard for "talking" to Kinect. Why would children need school for that when they'd learn it earlier, faster and better just "watching TV"?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        I don't see why a basic hand vocabulary of 5-20 gestures from American Sign Language couldn't be the global standard for "talking" to Kinect.

        For one thing, other countries' Deaf communities might feel left out.

    • "Explain it to me"... ok It doesn't have to be as stupid as your lack-of imagination makes it sound. The remote control can come in the form of on-screen menus which users can use hand motions to swipe at. They could make a motion that brings down a digital pad for punching numbers or whatever else you might want, or else just a white board where you can draw the command you want in the air with your fingers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by brkello ( 642429 )

      Gesture creates and overlay on the screen, then you have an icon on the screen you can manipulate with your hand (like a mouse arrow) and there you go. Really, wasn't that hard.

  • Let the XBox be in a tablet format.
    That would be a powerful combination. Winning!!

  • 12 watts of power, right? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by migla ( 1099771 ) on Sunday April 24, 2011 @04:57AM (#35919876)

    Not to be a party-pooper, because different interfaces should be explored, of course, but for day to day usage I could, on principle, not justify using a TV remote that draws 12 watts.

  • Stupid. (Score:4, Informative)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Sunday April 24, 2011 @05:00AM (#35919886) Journal
    I think that there is a reason that this guy is writing opinion pieces for CNN, rather than actual strategies:

    Microsoft's "unwillingness" to split off some sort of 'xbox TV' thing: So, the kinect is a ~$100-$120 device(and Microsoft is apparently not making a loss; but not trying to mar a launch by gouging). On top of that, it needs a host device to run the body-detection stuff. So, you might be able to do an 'xbox TV' for a bit less than a base-model xbox SKU+Kinect, by going with a weaker CPU and no GPU; but such a device would still cost much more than a universal remote and not so much less than the base model xbox that it could really differentiate itself.

    "Table full of remotes": Y'know why you have so many remotes? Because you have a zillion sucky little set-top-boxes that require more fiddling than joe user is willing to devote to the problem to get working together nicely. Guess what problem your 'xbox TV', no matter how magical the input experience, won't solve? Oh, yeah, that one. Consumer video is a mess, with endless fast-replaced devices, minimal control standardization(and what standardization there is, as with HDMI CEC or Cablecard, is either a few rounds short of fully baked or a failure by design), and some fairly entrenched players who have absolutely no intention of being shoved out of the way so that you can use the box you want to, rather than Scientific Atlanta's latest sick effort. That is the hard part.

  • If it was such an interesting feature, TV manufacturers could just licence the tech from PrimeSense [primesense.com], the company behind Kinect, and built it straight into TVs...

  • The article says a qwerty keyboard in the living room is a bad idea, without explaining why. So, why?

    Thanks.

    • "What the Kinect Could Be, But Probably Won't" -- Been there done that -- TFA should be called, "What Kinect & LIRC hackers have realized is really lame way to control a TV or computer."

      The article says a qwerty keyboard in the living room is a bad idea, without explaining why. So, why?

      Thanks.

      Because Dvorak is so much nicer.

      On a serious note, I don't see keyboards going away any time soon (or ever). I can type almost as fast as I think and 8 times as fast as I can get my voice recognition software to recognize.

      What I am seeing more of is Computers. Everywhere. In portable phone & tablet form fac

    • It's a bad replacement for a remote control. You want a remote. You don't want to have to rub your belly and pat your head to change your television's view mode from Stretch to S.Stretch, so Kinect is a bad replacement too.

      Try running XBMC with just a keyboard sometime and tell me how you like it.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by jtmach ( 958490 )
        I run XBMC with just a keyboard all the time. I have a Logitech DiNovo Mini in the living room, and I almost never use the mouse mode, which leaves me with just the functionality of the keyboard. The only real issue I've run into is that the Mini doesn't have function keys. So I couldn't close the Netflix plugin, autohotkey fixed that right up.

        • your memory must be better than mine, I can never remember which key does what except for the biggies.

  • Wow, talk about a bad idea (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    All you need is two people who wanna watch TV, for the matter let's say a husband and his wife, and all they have is one TV that has no remote - both can control it by merely moving their hands, and lord knows Mr. Something doesn't want to watch that reality show that Mrs. Something really likes. Five minutes later, and they're using they hands to kill each other, not control the TV.

    Not to talk about when they reach out their hand to grab a tissue from the table, but the TV mistakes it for a shutdown comman

  • Especially if it will respond with Majel Barret's voice.

  • Kinect uses a camera. If you want to use gestures to turn the TV on the camera has to be on all the time. For me thats a little bit creepy. I know kinect just turns the image it gets into a model, but what if the suppliers of the equipment sell the data it collects to advertisers? How much time do you actually spend in front of the TV? Do you listen to music? What music? When you rent a DVD how many people are actually watching? Is that more than the DVD was licensed to be viewed by?

    And so on.

  • The problem, as they see it, is Microsoft's inability to actually bring this into common usage for regular television viewing. "It seems like the company is tied too much to the Xbox's substantial gaming revenue to split the Xbox TV stuff off as a separate product â" even though there's a huge population of non-gamers who probably have no interest in buying an Xbox.

    Sales as a separate product would be incremental and would not hurt Xbox or Kinect sales to gamers. However developing and supporting an in

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Locutus ( 9039 )
      revenue is 2nd fiddle at Microsoft so don't think revenue is all that important. They have Windows and MS Office supplying billions in profits so things like the XBox, Windows for devices, Zune, etc are all products with the primary purpose to protect the profit machine and limit or restrict growth of a potential competitor to that profit stream. That's how and why they can lose 10s of billions on Xbox and keep doing it or lose around 20 billion on the Windows CE base. For 20 years their PC OS has been thei

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jamesl ( 106902 )

        Locutus said, For 20 years their PC OS has been their one and only profit generator ...

        Fiscal year 2010 operating income:
        Windows & Windows Live -- $12.977 billion
        Server and Tools -- $5.491 billion
        Microsoft Business Division -- $11.776 billion
        Entertainment and Devices -- $679 million

        MSFT Annual Report
        http://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar10/10k_fr_dis.html [microsoft.com]

        It turns out that you are wrong.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Locutus ( 9039 )
          All but the Entertainment and Devices div are based on the Windows OS or tied at the hip to it.

          Windows and Windows Live - Windows OS
          Server and Tools - Windows OS
          Microsoft Business Division (aka MS Office, etc ) - Windows OS

          Entertainment and Devices(aka Xbox, Windows CE ) - Xbox is Windows 2K based but a fork so this applies. But, considering they spent over $20 billion or so to get here, they'll need another decade to get in the black there IMO. Just look at BING, it bleed $2.3 billion in 2010 and $1.6 bill
  • People made the same argument amount about graphics cards... that the revenue from gaming was so large that the cards could never be "separated off" for for general purpose- or scientific- computing. But now general purpose computing on graphics processing units is an industry with its own conferences, journals and "off-the-shelf" vendors even though only a tiny fraction of graphics cards end up in such clusters. Now, I don't know about the feasibility of using a Kinect in the manner suggested, but revenue
  • I don't know what's the most ridiculous; The headline (since when is "what could be but probably won't" news?), the fact that these news start with "An opinion piece at CNN" (opinion /= news) or that the whole idea is so utterly stupid that I can't help but facepalm (which would probably entice Kinect to delete the channel or something).

    Next up: Some guy on the street says cars could run on liquid gold soon but probably won't. In his opinion car manufacturers could produce cars running on gold for 5$ less

    • Just because you're entitled to have your opinion doesn't mean it's worth sharing. Liquid gold cars cheaper than oil is actually not possible. Kinect eliminating TV/media/Web remotes for everyone is clearly completely possible, except that Microsoft is probably not capable of doing it.

      BTW, just because you're entitled to have a limited HCI interface design imagination doesn't mean it's worth expecting that from good designers.

  • It's obvious that the miraculous "convergence" of TV and Internet people (especially financial people) have been talking about for over a decade is simply Kinect + Google TV.

    It's also pretty obvious that monopolism and patents (monopolism) will prevent Microsoft and Google from allowing that. At least, Microsoft's desperate clutch on monopoly rather than value will prevent its Kinect from putting Google atop that converged platform, leaving MS doing the dirty work while Google's brand and revenues shoot up

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gig ( 78408 )

      Ridiculous. Google TV is just a PC. It's obvious people don't want a PC in their living room. It's obvious Google can't design its way out of a paper bag. It's obvious Google has no idea how to make a consumer product. Google TV did not sell. More people buy an Apple TV every week than all the Google TV units that have been sold in its lifetime. For the price of a Google TV, you can get an Apple TV and an iPod touch to use as remote and for apps. Then you can look something up on the Web or tweet without ta

      • No, it's obvious that you don't have a Google TV unit. Especially not one integrated into the TV. The difference in form factor is everything to the mass market. And the difference in open platform from what you do understand is also obviously unknown to you. Nobody's developing apps for Apple TV except Apple, but the Android that is Google TV is where all the developers are and are going.

        Google TV doesn't have to take up the whole screen. Picture in picture is standard in the HW, OS and default app

  • Kinect is already available for programming against (see http://www.ideum.com/blog/category/kinect/ [ideum.com])

  • I would love to see a hack that would allow people to use the Kinect with programs like 3dMax and other 3d programs. It would be awesome to be able to download or create a 3d model and then use the kinetic to animate the models and easily make your own animated movies.

  • Kinect is almost twice the price of a set-top computer such as Apple TV or Roku. Even if it came with a free set-top, it is too expensive for the set-top market. And an Xbox and Kinect cost more than an Apple TV and iPod touch, which also gives the user a device for apps while they watch, like looking up things on the Web or tweeting or voting on American Idol. And more people know how to use an iPod than Kinect.

    What would be needed is a $99 set-top that has a built-in cheapo Kinect. Maybe just a webcam. Th

  • The real headache of integrating a system so that it can control home entertainment systems is the tremendous number of systems with which one must integrate..and the ongoing maintenance of that integration. Every new Blu-ray player, tv set, cable box, etc. means at the very least a sanity check on remote settings and at the very most a whole effort around producing a set of new commands. Multiply that by every vendor of note, and then add the update feature. Even Logitech had to buy another company to g

  • Am I the only one that whenever I hear of Kinect-controlled TVs thinks of the Sub-Eartha Radio on the Heart of Gold, where you had to remain perfectly motionless in order to remain listening to the same station?
  • Since when are QWERTY keyboards a terrible idea in the living room?

    I picked up a Logitech diNovo Edge wireless keyboard a few years ago, and I very much prefer it to any remote control I've come across. Its volume slider alone is a more sophisticated, responsive, and precise approach to the three-button, louder/quieter/mute approach every remote has. Same with the horizontal and vertical scrolling touchpad. Searching for specific media? Keying in precisely what you're searching for will almost always be
  • Microsoft didn't develop the depth imaging technology used in the kinect. The company that did (http://www.primesense.com/) is in a much better position to market the technology to television manufacturers, etc. In fact, they already are (http://www.primesense.com/?p=563).

  • "The idea of being able to ditch your table full of remote controls and just use your hands and voice to interact with the TV is compelling."

    So the reporter did not know that for LESS than the price of the Xbox device you could have bought a Universal programmable remote and Ditched that table full of remotes for a SINGLE remote?

    I love tech reporters that do not know ANYTHING at all about tech.

  • I like and own several MS hardware items, and they usually work better/well when compared to similar priced items. BUT having followed the path of this device I feel that it is in the wrongs hands, I don't think that it is part of MS focus and so it will get marginalised, and even forgotten once they need another game feature to trump the others. The only hope that I see for it is to have a 3rd party develop uses for it.

  • Someone should just hack one together. Why even bring the kinect into it? The motion tracking PhD project that was on here a the other week (wasn't it released open source?), or one of the packages that people in comments claimed rendered it no big deal, plus a usb webcam and an atom powered computer with a IR interface should render this possible for a determined hacker. Shouldn't it? At least as far as channel + / -, Volume + / -, and input increment goes.

    Sounds like a nice bag of hacker-points just w

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