Microsoft's Marc Whitten sees Natal replacing television remote controls

by Ben Gilbert on Nov 28th 2009 10:30PM

Speaking to a room full of executives focused on "the business of online video" at this year's Streaming Media West trade show, it's easy to understand how Xbox Live GM Marc Whitten could fall into hyperbole regarding the implications of Project Natal. "I believe that this will be the largest leap of TV experience since the remote control," Whitten said on the subject, reports Yahoo Tech. "With the flick of my wrist I can change a channel ... with the power of my voice I can start a movie."

Aside from the more obvious implications to television using technology that can interpret voice and motion, he sees a future where Natal will recognize individual voices in a room and allow for a variety of human input – from "laughter" to "the number of people in a room" and everything in between. "Watching a movie is a passive input, but a TV should understand what you're trying to do." We don't know about you, Marc, but we're a bit worried about the implications of our television understanding what some of us are trying to do.

[Via Edge]

Source

Tags: marc-whitten, Microsoft, natal, project-natal, remote-control, streaming-media-west, television, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (103)

I fine with having to turn the TV off myself. I don't want one that senses a lack of motion and does it for me nor do I want to do the jitterbug in front of the fucking thing to turn it off. When did pushing a button become so labor intensive? Quit overselling this shit MS like you did the LIVE vision camera...What a turd that is. You want to help people make them have to run for 30 minutes on a treadmill to turn the TV on!

your wife/gf is watching some lifetime show and you yell "NEEEEEXXXXT!" to your ESPN show.... classic..

K.I.S.S. the design axiom.

KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID!!!

You know there are these things on just about every wall that haven't changed in almost 100 years. You flick them up to turn on the lights and flick them down to turn the lights off. People have been trying to change them almost since they were invented. In the early 1900s people were treated to the voice controlled home at World Fairs. In the 1950s your home was going to be fully automated. In the 1990s you were going to be able to control your entire home from your computer.

Remember how X10 was going to revolutionize home automation. How many people actually remember X10?

Just run with me here and think about it. Flick your wrist twenty times in a row.

How many flicks did you get through before you stopped and said, "what a stupid A**" and stopped. Gets king of old and tiring after five or six flicks. Do you really want to change channels doing that?

Now start saying, 124,138,1078 or History Channel, Spike, HBOZone. Do you really want to change channels like that?

There are a lot of things we see or read about that seem so cool in concept but do not work well in reality. Remember Back to the Future 2 when young Marty comes home and tells the TV to display a whole bunch of channels. Looked pretty cool but would really be a pain in the ass in reality.

You could install voice controlled lights and home automation gimmicks. For a couple months it might be pretty cool but after that initial wow phase you'll go back to flicking a switch up and down because it is the simplest way to accomplish the task and you don't have to think about it.

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