[mythtv-users] Some notes on Google TV

[Brad Templeton]

On 11/17/2010 11:08 AM, Eric Sharkey wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 4:48 AM, Dave Brown<davebrown099 at gmail.com>  wrote:
>    
>>> Search is what Google does best, after all. But, hopefully, with the
>>> addition of some indexing and optimisation, Myth's search can be improved
>>> (at least a little).
>>>        
>> Wish it would come back too, for those of us who only use a remote.  Search
>> can be so painfull with the on screen keyboard.
>>      
> It's long been on my wish list to support controlling MythTV by voice.
>   And no, I don't mean standing in front of the TV and saying "Up, up,
> enter, right, enter", but rather having a structured language for
> control which could be spoken, more like "Watch Recordings.  List The
> Daily Show.  Play last Thursday's episode.".
>
> This is the only way I can see really doing complex searching/actions
> without requiring a full keyboard.
>
> When I win the lottery and quit my day job, I think I'll begin working on this.
>
> Eric
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>    
This has been talked about and toyed with for some time in various 
products.   The Logitech GTV, which I do not have, supports voice search 
if you use an Android phone as the remote via a special app.   This app 
is supposed to come out for the Sony and other devices eventually.

Since the Tivo arrived, I have always felt speaking into the remote was 
a likely good interface for many operations.  Speech recognition over a 
limited vocabulary (ie. the names of shows, or even more specific the 
names of shows you have recorded) is pretty reliable these days, can be 
even more with training.

We'll see how people react to the Google one which I presume makes use 
of Google's own cloud based speech rec servers.

However, I think the reality is that even with that, people should just 
start trying to accept keyboards at the TV.  Not necessarily for TV 
watching, but because for me I quite frequently switch into web browsing 
during TV sessions, and that really wants a keyboard.   And I also find 
that if I pause while another person in the room wants to leave or take 
a call or something, being able to move to email or the web is quite 
handy.  Once you have it, you will wonder why you resisted the 
keyboard.  This also presumes having 1080 line large screens, something 
that were not ubiquitous when most of today's systems were designed.   
Indeed, one of GTV's advantages is that it was designed in the HDTV 
era.  (Even so it mostly uses text that you can read on an SDTV, but 
that will probably change soon enough.)