Friday’s question: What’s up with Natural Interfaces?

Have been thinking a lot about natural interfaces lately. Don’t ask… but decided to ask the experts at Primesense what they thought… since that is what they do. The question we asked was this:

How are natural interaction revolutionizing Consumer Electronics and how is technology now adapting to the user, its master?

You know what? They gave us a good answer and now we feel better. Happy to see it applied to more than just gaming, they always get the good stuff. – JLH

• Today people are faced with a greater number of devices to connect to networks, a large number of which are mobile personal devices. The challenge for designers and developers is how to create user interfaces that are able to adapt to the interaction resources of the device while making it simple and intuitive for the user. Users want to be able to pick up their device and use it without a tutorial. Natural Interaction is allowing consumer electronic devices – TV, gaming, cars, GPS, mobile –to adapt to the user instead of making the user adapt to the device.

• Natural interfaces will create a bridge between machines and humans to allow users to interact with technology in a natural and humanistic way. Advances in portability and instant availability have taken the mobile phone to the next level, but interaction on the mobile device has not had a chance to evolve as quickly as the applications that users want. PrimeSense sees for the future the entire ecosystem of devices, including mobile, co-existing with humans in a way that makes life easier by bringing together all the elements of the human sensory experience – voice, sight, touch, biometrics, movements and gestures.

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Is 3D TV all we keep hearing about?

I must say, I was drawn to the 3D TV Pavilion sponsored by CableLabs at SCTE. CableLabs has partnered with some of the leading consumer electronics manufacturers like Sony and Panasonic to show some really fun 3D TV demonstrations (some in mini theaters).

I sat through the mini theater presentation by Sony and the home theater experience from Panasonic, both of which impressed me. I found the Panasonic HD Theater to be a little less choppy than the Sony one (although I’m always a fan of watching the New England Patriots in 3D, hello Tom Brady!) The consensus of some others that were also in my demonstrations was that Panasonic had a smoother 3D experience.

The pavilion also shows demonstrations of 3D over broadcast and 3D from a Blu-Ray. The demonstration of 3D video signals delivered over a single channel from an actual operating cable TV system is the first of its kind to show this. Also, it doesn’t use colored 3D glasses, instead this system works with a new generation of 3D-ready TVs using polarized glasses to bring the realism of the theater-like 3D to the home.

Of course to get this at home you’ll have to buy a 3D TV. There were 3D TV sets on display from Hyundai IT, LG Electronics and Sony but additional work needs to be done before this is all ready to use at home. CableLabs says that they expect deployment of 3D TV will be in response to demand by subscribers and will depend upon the availability of the new 3D-ready TVs in the market. – AC

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Tags: 3D television, 3D TV, CableLabs, Consumer electronics, LG Electronics, SCTE, Sony

Video frame rate conversion just got better

Image by Niffty via Flickr

Sure, it doesn’t sound sexy, but trust us, it is cool. Behind the scenes cool. Why? Well most of the world watches TV and those TV addicts might watch their favorite shows on a fancy flat panel — and this means that your image will look so real that it might be a cylon standing in your living room. Bottom line? image enhancement capabilities for flat panel televisions and other consumer electronics products, courtesy of Zoran Corporation. All from a chip – you think technology can’t be sexy? Think again.

Tags: Consumer electronics