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Philips uWand motion-sensing STB remote hands-on (video)
Philips brought its uWand motion-sensing set-top-box back to CES this year, and as we hadn't shown you the unit in action, we'd take a look and see what it promises. The company has just signed deals with Broadcom, Marvell and Intel to integrate its Wiimote-style controller into the trio's home-entertainment hardware. Playing with it for a few minutes, we were impressed by its accuracy, although gestures did take a little time to get used to. If you'd like to catch your humble narrator looking out of touch with a TV, watch the footage after the break.
Philips uWand hands-on
Philips has been touting its uWand "direct pointer" remote for a good while now, but we've never had the chance to actually use one ourselves. Today that omission has been rectified as we got our mitts around this motion / gesture-based controller and gave it a quick test drive. It works by having an infrared camera embedded in the front, which detects an IR beacon in your TV and thereby judges its own distance, tilt and relation to the TV. That then allows for things like motion-based zooming, pointing the remote at the particular thing on the television that you want to "click" on, and navigational shortcuts attached to gestures performed with this handheld. There's also a nice spacious keyboard on the back, assisting in the use of all these Smart TVs CES has been littered with. Philips' intention is to license the technology out to other manufacturers, which could result in consumer products by 2012 -- so yeah, it's not terribly close to your living room yet, but our gallery of images is. %Gallery-113562%
