The 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas doesn’t officially open its doors until Tuesday but that hasn’t stopped a slew of new television releases that feature voice recognition.
“Traditional search on televisions is tedious and amazingly outdated,” said Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager of Nuance Mobile.
To remedy that, Nuance unveiled the Dragon TV, a voice and natural language understanding platform for all major TV, set-top box, remote control, and application platforms, including Linux, Android, and iOS. Dragon TV uses Nuance’s voice and natural language capabilities and allows viewers to find content by speaking channel numbers, station names, and show and movie names. Users can also search for content by actor and genre, and stay connected via Twitter, Facebook, and Skype. In addition, with Nuance’s Far-Talk technology, Dragon TV can break through interferences of multiple acoustic sources.
Nuance Dragon TV
Lenovo also unveiled its first television, the 55-inch K91, powered by QualComm’s 8060 Snapdragon dual core CPU, which is also the first also the world’s first smart TV running the Android 4.0 operating system. Its smart “Sandwich” UI unites three major smart TV functions, including Video On Demand (VOD), Internet applications and traditional TV programs, the company said. It also features facial recognition, and yes, voice control.
Lenovo TV
Not to be outdone, Samsung also took the wraps off its own 55-inch Super OLED TV, with voice control, motion control and face recognition features. Users can turn the TV on or off, adjust the volume or activate selected apps through speech. They can also use voice to activate the search function in the Web browser and tell the TV what they are searching for using two unidirectional array microphones. Noise cancellation technology helps to separate any background noise from the users’ commands.
Samsung TV, courtesy of AllThingsD
Finally, LG Electronics introduced its 2012 HDTVs, including the LM9600 and LM8600 series which feature the LG Dual Core chipset that powers faster loading speeds and enables voice recognition technology on the new 4-mode Magic Remote. The new Magic Remote functions also include gesture and pointing.
