Reinventingthe Iptv Remote

摘要

The hardware that supports IPTV in the home historically has been the last candidate for innovation, leaving stalwarts such as the "up, down, left, right" remote control unchanged since its inception. Yet this is slowly beginning to change, as dynamic interfaces and more content than ever before call for new browsing methods. Innovative remote control design, while still in the early stages, is poised to reinvent the IPTV navigation experience. Hillcrest Laboratories is one name that consistently comes up in discussions of innovative remote control vendors. At January's Consumer Electronics Show, Hillcrest and Texas Instruments introduced the first remote based on the emerging radio frequency for consumer electronics (RF4CE) standard, which eliminates the line-of-sight limitations of infrared (IR) devices. The cost of adding RF technology to equipment is about 10 times the cost of integrating an infrared chipset, which runs about 20 cents, said Jason Black-well, senior analyst with ABI Research. Because of that expense, he expects new designs to slowly start the transition to RF, growing at 55% annually through 2014. Blackwell described the remote evolution as a long, drawn-out process, although the first iterations of RF designs already are shipping in Japan. Consumer electronics (CE) vendors in the U.S., including RF4CE member Sony, are only in the early stages, hoping to drive usage by early adopters then ramp up volumes and drive down costs to take RF mainstream.