If the trouble of typing in a credit card number was the thing keeping you from renting
acTVila video on-demand movies in Japan, Sony's fixed that right up by including
FeliCa reading capability in the remote for its latest BRAVIA LCDs. No longer
tied to an ugly outboard box, now you need only to press your credit card, cellphone or other RFID enabled device against the remote to authorize payment. The Japanese edition W5 and F5 line of LCDs mostly feature 240Hz MotionFlow and the latest BRAVIA Engine 3 display processing, and top out around ¥450,000 ($4,614) for a 52-inch. Check out video of the RFID remote on
Akihabara News or embedded after the break and imagine living in a Blade Runner-type world of the future where overpriced rentals downloaded via fiber directly onto an HDTV screen are billed to whatever card desired with a mere flick of the wrist, as opposed to overpriced, overcompressed rentals that shamefully expand ones cable bill each month.
[Via
Akihabara News &
AV Watch]
posted March 2nd 2009 11:03AM
Terrible fucking idea. There is no goddamn way I'm buying a sony TV if it has an internet-wired RFID reader in it. NOBODY pays attention or warns about how much these things gut personal privacy.
It won't just read your damn credit cards, it will read everything in proximity. Having this wired to the internet and so many things with unremovable RFIDs in them means that advertising can be served based on everything in RFID proximity to the TV. ETC.