Even if it worked, the very concept of a "voice activated remote" seems rather ludicrous to me. Until we get artificial intelligence to the Star Trek level, I think using buttons is always going to be faster and less error-prone than any kind of voice recognition.

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If it's connected to the interent you could always ask the remote: "Where can I get a Mac"??

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And doesn't he have to press a button to talk to the bloody thing?

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Having had a chance to play with this remote at an Intel conference I can tell you right now that I see little to no use for it.

In the amount of time it takes for you to say something you could have pushed a series of buttons. Now for the more difficult commands, yes it is a nice feature, but seriously why on earth would I want to talk to my remote control?

Now I know that what I say now may be invalid in 5 years so I’m going to bite my tongue on this conclusion, but I think the solution isn’t fewer buttons, but easier menus. This whole concept of a “channel” is going down the tubes anyway. It isn’t about channel 4, 5,7,11 anymore. Consumers want things based on content. They want Family Guy, they want the Weather, and they want Lost, whatever channel it’s on isn’t important.

This is where the IPTV revolution is already starting to take place; I don’t think we’ll see it in the consumer space for at least 5 years because of the lack of broadband infrastructure in America.

I do hope I’m proved wrong by all this :) and that it happens sooner!

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To his defense, the sound system and the reverb from his mic was interferring with the remote's capabilities. I felt bad for him. But I agree, if intel is going to throw down a remote control shaped guantlet, they had better try harder than that.

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In high school, my friends and I always talked about how our remotes should have a dedicated "Record Family Guy" button....

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Of course, the remote he uses for his "no button remote" demo contains at least 20 buttons.

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Oh how painful!

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not to mention the 20$ 6-button gets it done, while this intel technology miracle costs surely 400$. what about universality? are they coming preprogramed with 200 languages? and what if i just say: when runs family guy this week? is it going to get that? or do i need to learn the exact commands?

I bet that if you hear that wrong-command-beep a couple of minutes long, trying to switch the channel to get your family guy, after trying 100 different commands if you forgot the right one, you'll be craving for a micro$oft 120-button mouse...

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If you're going to talk smack about someone like Apple you better have the goods to back it up.

When it finally did work it was pretty lame. It's just using a phone-style keypad interface to macro through screens. Why not just go directly to the info you request?

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I owned a voice activated remote for TV my 10 years ago. Worked about as well as his does.
Still not ready for prime time.

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A zero-button remote? Why use a remote at all? And I totally agree with Stefan about the time it takes to talk to the system, and also, it's tiring to talk to your computer. And good comment LD! Nuf' said

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Surely a voice activated remote on a system that is already playing music or some other audio output is a bit of a flaw?

I mean, do you think it's going to pick up "Record Lost for this week and the next 7 weeks" while you play AC DC at level 11??

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This was really lame. I'm not giving the guy any slack for echos or mic problems (thats why you rehearse your demo BEFORE you do it live!). The remote clearly has 30-40 buttons on it. And as mentioned before, the guy definitely clicks a button for voice command input. I will give them some slack for the interface, the sloppy multi-windows to get to the thing you wanted is Windows fault. The same device for a different OS would probably work much smoother. Lastly, and most importantly - they made the same silly mistake so many people make when dealing with Apple, they didn't do there homework. Apple has been there and done that, voice recognition was in the Mac OS well before OS X. Any 3rd party developer (or average person will a hour to kill) could make some macros or a software app using what is already in the Mac OS and turn any Bluetooth mic/headset into a true no-button remote.

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If it is a "no button remote", isn't it really just a wireless microphone?

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... the zero button remote with 20 buttons also has a PTT (pust to talk) button on the side?!

Leaving the remote for what it is, they must have some pretty good technology behind it, if the computer can understand short sentences and a plethora of TV show titles from any user who requests it without training ... which I'm assuming is what they were trying to showcase.

Still, I think talking to your computer (other than dictation) is a novelty. Short of 15 years ago I had some voice commands programmed with my then state of the art "multimedia computer" which meant it had a 2x CD-ROM & 16 bit sound card. Through the soundblaster software you could record your voice command and attach actions to those. It was fun for a while, but grew old really quick.

And, even with current technology you'll need a button or the batteries will drain constantly, relaying that audio signal to the pc ... and then what about all those "command not found" errors?

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