Silicon Valley Sleuth: Intel's button-less remote (Intel Developer Forum)

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Intel's button-less remote (Intel Developer Forum)

Intel felt challenged when Apple chief Steve Jobs displayed its 6 button remote control that works with the Front Row application. So the chipmaker set out and developed what it refers to a "zero button" remote control that uses voice recognition. Except that it isn't really zero button: Don MacDonald, general manager of Intel's Digital Home Group during a demonstration admitted that simple tasks such as volume control and pause are still best performed by buttons.

But he did demonstrate how voice recognition could eleminate many clicks when scheduling to record a show - even though the demonstration in which he looked for the "Family Guy" cartoon series on a Windows Media Center Edition PC nearly failed.

The remote control is part of the Salt Creek Concept Platform that (in Intel's words:) "demonstrates the technologies and usages of a 2007 consumer electronics entertainment PC, with an innovative design to "fit" in the digital living room of the future."

MacDonald talks up the media capabilities of the Viiv platform. The remote is the black device standing up on his left, between the display and the white computer.