Only 37% of 4S owners said they definitely wanted voice-commands on their television set, while 20% said they did not want them there. Mr. Barrett said he attributes the “limited enthusiasm” for the feature on TVs to concerns it doesn’t work well in noisy areas. “When watching TV there is so much background noise,” he said.

Just six days prior to Apple officially launching iCloud and Siri, Google was rushing their patent application to the US Patent and Trademark Office covering a new Google TV remote and/or application. The new remote will use voice controls associated with Google's own cloud services. The user will be able to use their Android Phone as the remote to make inquiries about TV shows and the TV will list what's available as illustrated in our cover graphic. Apple has had a similar feature under Remote for several years now, but it doesn't relate to live TV as Google's will. Google's real competitor on this particular front will come from Samsung who just announced their latest TV remote with voice controls and a touch pad. The race to bring the best next generation TV Remote to market is officially on.  

Boo-keun Yoon, president of Samsung’s consumer electronics decision kicked off the press conference with some bold pronouncements about where the company’s Smart TVs are headed. He said eventually they’ll be able to “Listen, See, and Do” without any interaction with a remote control.

The company then played a quick demo video that showed off motion control capabilities — bringing Kinect-like controls directly to the TV.

Sony just announced two new Google TV devices at CES: the NSZ-GP9 Blu-ray player and the NSZ-GS7 media streamer. Both feature a new remote with a backlit keyboard, a touchpad with gesture navigation support, and three-axis motion sensing for gaming. (We're guessing that means phone-style tilt and rotation, not full six axis control like the PS3, but we'll have to confirm that.) The Blu-ray player remote also has a built-in microphone so you can access Google voice search and find content across live TV, streaming services, and the internet just by speaking.

Die bei LG mitgelieferte Fernbedienung nimmt Sprachbefehle entgegen und kann mithilfe einer Speech-to-Text-Funktion diktierte Wörter in Text umwandeln. Sie hat den veröffentlichten Bildern nach zu urteilen eine vollwertige QWERTZ/QWERTY-Tastatur mit Nummernblock. Das Gerät wird vorerst nur in den USA erhältlich sein. Zum Preis gibt es bislang keine Informationen. Auch Samsung plant dieses Jahr, erste Geräte mit Googles TV-Software zu verkaufen, allerdings gibt es hierzu noch keine Informationen. Dass der Hersteller den Fernseher auf der CES vorstellt, ist ebenso unwahrscheinlich.

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Monday, Nuance unveiled Dragon TV, a voice and natural language processing software aimed at makers of TVs, set-top boxes, video game consoles and other devices, as well as cable service operators. The software is designed to allow TV viewers to command their televisions using voice, rather than the traditional remote control, initiating programming queries and navigating channels by name, rather than searching for the right number. In addition, the software is designed to let users communicate via SMS and other web-enabled services, through their connected TV sets and TV devices.

Beyond disaggregation, personalization is ultimately the most powerful consumer value of digital media. My mother’s TV experience was to walk over to her TV set and turn a dial to select among three channels to satisfy her individuality. But in the next generation, no two people will receive the same recommendations from the millions of content choices available.