Apple’s iTV or Google TV – A Trojan Horse for Something Bigger? October 4, 2006 [Club Viodi Members Only]

[Note:  On 7/4, I downloaded and tried the Google Media Server.  As an average consumer, the benefits didn't immediately jump out at me.  The Wii did not show up as a networked device nor did any of my PCs, so I wasn't able to view media from the Google Media Server on other PCs or on the Wii.  The good news is that I spent no more than 15 minutes downloading and testing, so it wasn't a huge timesink.  I see the potential, but I don't think they are there yet.]

produced an extremely interesting panel on television navigation at the NXTcomm 2008 conference. This panel went beyond the normal hand waving and showed the future is here in many ways. One of the most interesting applications of this panel is one where broadband could prove instrumental in providing medical rehabilitation.   

Francis MacDougal, CTO and co-founder of GestureTek, demonstrated his company’s facial recognition and full-body tracking technology.  What this technology allows is interaction with a computer, mobile phone or set-top without the need for a remote control. By simply pointing and waving one’s hands or body, it is possible to control a user interface.   According to MacDougal, the software can tell to within 93% accuracy whether a person controlling an application is a man or a woman.    

One of the more interesting applications for this technology is in the health industry. MacDougal gave an example of how one study found a 30% re-growth in brain function in 6 weeks due to playing interactive games using their technology. He cited examples in Spain and England whereby the medical systems would subsidize the cost of bringing a set-top and service to stroke victims in their homes, as it would be much more cost effective than treating the patients in a medical facility.  From a hardware point of view, it only requires the addition of a simple USB video camera.

Hillcrest Labs has a different, but still revolutionary approach to navigating displays in multiple dimensions. Their motion sensing based remote control is analogous to what Ninentdo introduced with its Wii. A key difference with the Wii’s remote is Hillcrest’s ability to dampen hand tremor and provide a very stable pointer on the screen. Interestingly, this same hand tremor provides a signature of sorts and can provide greater than 80% accuracy in identifying particular users. 

Andy Addis, Hillcrest’s Executive Vice President of Marketing, said their software can be included in any remote control (at another presentation I saw earlier in the year, it was suggested that it could be incorporated in cell phones). Addis indicated that the remote control was just one part of the equation and that the navigation has to evolve from “flash-cut” (x-y) to “spatial” (3-D) in order to cut down on surfing and increase viewing.   

The panel’s moderator, Danny Briere, CEO of Telechoice, expanded on the idea of what a remote could be by suggesting that the aforementioned technology could be incorporated into stuffed animals or toys (e.g. the next generation Webkinz). This is an interesting approach, as it takes the remote from a commodity to something that has an emotional connection. 

It was somewhat a given that targeted advertising would be one justification for implementing these technologies.   Closely related to targeted advertising is consumer privacy and what information is given to advertisers, merchants, government. These issues were not the focus of this panel. No, this panel was a nuts and bolts review of hand-waving technology that appears to be ready for prime-time.     

Aho has been an advocate for an open approach to IPTV as a way to address the IPTV issues identified by Bulk. This approach started at the municipal level in Sweden with the idea that the infrastructure should simultaneously be able to support multiple service providers.  Around 20 city networks have deployed the platform. Standards, interoperability and openness are a central tenet of the Basebox environment [now called Openchoice.tv].  Openchoice is reminiscent of the FCC Open Video System.  This might be an interesting approach for regional telco networks.  Click here to read an overview of the Openchoice.tv/Basebox platform. 

Robert Cooper of Aastra followed up Taylor’s presentation with applications of how their customers are feeding XML data from Soft Switches or the Internet (e.g. think a CNN news feed directly to the phone) to LCD displays on the Aastra telephones.  Aastra’s Software Development Kit is available at no charge, so it is easy for developers to create their own applications. Cooper gave an example of how a visual voicemail application took only 4 hours to develop. 

A school system in Texas uses Aastra phones as an alternative to paper and/or computers for determining attendance. The teacher uses the LCD screen and the phone’s buttons to record which students are in class. An XML feed, sent from the phone to the IP PBX, triggers an automatic action within the PBX to call the parents to confirm that the children are home and not skipping school. A software-defined, panic button is another feature of this particular phone

One of the more interesting applications that Cooper spoke of was the use of SIP over DECT 6.0 phones. Cooper said the DECT protocol is less prone to interference than VoIP over WiFi. With SIP, it is possible to deliver the same text applications to wireless phones as one could get using a desktop PBX. I wonder if there is a way that a spectrum-starved independent telco could use the combination of SIP and DECT 6.0 to create a robust, community wide and feature-rich, cordless telephone service (it looks like Aastra could support up to 512 handsets per PBX, so it might have to be a small service area)?

“The unmanaged network is where it gets interesting,” said Michael Branch of Minerva Networks. He said this in the context of a telco operator bringing content from the Internet to the television. He suggested that an XML widget could remap specific Internet content (e.g. a photostream from Flickr) to the television. Matt Cuson of Minerva Networks alluded to this kind of widget integration last September in a panel in San Jose, so it wasn’t a big surprise to hear this approach from this middleware provider. 

XML also allows, as Branch put it, “guided viewing,” whereby a trigger on either an event (e.g. a pop-up window that links to iTunes so a person can order a song that is playing in the video program he is watching) or an action by the user could determine the content being displayed (e.g. a request for more information). Of course, XML is also useful for displaying traditional managed video information (e.g. VOD titles), as well as telephony meta-data (e.g. caller ID on the TV).