Hitachi's face-recognizing display turns off, saves power when you look away (video)
By Darren Murph 
posted Oct 10th 2009 12:31AM
posted Oct 10th 2009 12:31AM
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So when I get up to grab a beer from the kitchen and still looking at the tv, it turns off? No Thank You.
This.
You caught that design flaw fast :O
The backlight will be turned off not the entire system thus saving most of the required power.
I think it works/shuts down the screen when you literally walk away let's say to the kitchen to cook/grab a beer or have meals while your tv is on you can listen to it still but the screen will simply go into stand by mode saving your energy!;) At some point good feature. Let's say you or somebody forgot to turn the tv off then you don't have to worry about power it will save it for you;)
I think it works/shuts down the screen when you literally walk away let's say to the kitchen to cook/grab a beer or have meals while your tv is on you can listen to it still but the screen will simply go into stand by mode saving your energy!;) At some point good feature. Let's say you or somebody forgot to turn the tv off then you don't have to worry about power it will save it for you;)
I hope the face recognition system works better than engadget's comment system..
WTF is up with that guy in the background? Swine Flu?
That's the first thing i thought too. I get up and walk in the kitchen to get something and the TV blinks out on me, yet i can still view the TV it's just an extreme viewing angle. Unless this thing has a 160 degree face recognition angle it's a gimmicky feature i'd turn off.
But if you're watching TV at night and the back light turns off, then you need another light to see where the dog is so you don't smash your face on the floor tripping over it.
What about during pr0n when you throw your head back in pleasure?
maybe they could even program the most exhilarating porn program ever with dick recognition, like turning the screen to low bright on full hard and then back on on semi soft to have some next stimulation cycles.
this works if you fall asleep..
It's like red light green light 123
doesn't the camera staying on take power?
No, every set comes packaged with a midget that hits the power button when you look away.
what do you mean power button?
i thought the midget just put up pictures that can move from magical midget picture land.
Even at it's best, I foresee a problem with just straight on viewing. If it loses track of your face for a moment (say for a sneeze) it will take a good chunk of time to power down the screen and then find your face again and turn back on. No thanks. Now if you can get a screen to notice if I've fallen asleep, then I'll buy one straight away.
I cannot see how that would be a problem given how fast LED backlights react.
It says plasma screen in the article?
Even if it wasn't plasma, you can see the poor reaction time in the video.
I'd be OK if it had a five minute delay. If I fall asleep, go into the other room, etc...
I'm still curious about the viewing angel too. Right now, I'm sitting at my desk and watching the TV in the next room, at a significant angle. Is it going to turn off?
So it saves power by turning off the TV but it levels it out the power usage by having another device being powered at all times to pick up your facial expression.. seems like a fail to me.
In Soviet Russia, TV watches you. For real now!
Do plasma TVs wear out quickly if you keep turning them off and on? If they're like lightbulbs, this feature will drastically reduce the life of your TV set.
Hopefully, this tech would be used on LED backlit TVs. LEDs don't care so much.
Wow what does that save? milliWatts?
Besides if they just removed the camera they could probably save more power without the thing...
Maybe change it so that if there are no people in the room it turns off, thermal camera?
I don't know but this idea sucks...
Engadget coments had higher quality back in the old days... World is going to waste.
It's becoming an idiocracy.
This brings us ever so close to the Telescreen.
Why not make it record live TV if your out of the room. That I would buy.
If a TV turns off in your living room, and nobody is around to see it, did it save power?
So combine this with TV's now all getting interactive, meaning connected to the net, and combine that with the past behavior of the NSA, and then think about that a sec.
I'm almost glad I'm a modern person who doesn't watch TV except in downloaded shows format. almost because the reason being that I can no longer stomach the freaking ads and such annoyances.
It seems by the video that reading the newspaper while watching TV is normal.
It seems strange but when people I'm looking at turn to read the news I also turn off -- sometimes for quite a while.
I think its useful where big screens are used for Ads in airports or for the programs of the day at hotels and in the rooms where persons always seem to leave the TV on and then leave the room or go to sleep - I hope it mutes the sound in those cases as noise pollution is the same as wasting energy.
The humorous upside
Today's lesson: The swine/flue Michael Jackson facemask is the simplest way to defeat the system!
We now know the way to overthrow our automatically turn off the black light Overlords.
Hope this works better than the stupid automatic flushing toilets and automatic faucets. I've seen urinals flush as you walk towards them, and nothing drives me crazier than the stupid toilets that flush as you're trying to put toilet paper on the seat (and splatter water all over the seat). And seriously why do we need faucets that randomly shut off as you're trying to wash your hands?!
Not to mention the stupid automatic lights that always shut off when no motion is detected-leading you stuck in the dark trying to read. Hilarious.
It look like the one guy was trying to take a picture of that little girls @SS!
This would be great for channels that just play music, and you just want to glance at the screen to see the name of the artist/song/album once in a while.