TVs are soon going to be able to read your moods

Just imagine what life would be like if your television set could work out how you were feeling and offer you programmes that it thinks you might be in the mood to watch. Sounds a bit on the crazy side doesn’t it?

Well even if it does, according Ashley Highfield, the UK Managing Director of Microsoft the “smart” television sets in the not too distant future will be “naturally intuitive” and will do just that.

They will be able to interact with you, analyse your facial expressions, your body movements and gestures and by taking into account programmes you’ve watched in the past, they will offer up content for you so that you don’t have to channel flick.

Wow! Me, I can’t wait for that, even for the sheer novelty factor.

“Within 5 to 10 years, it is inevitably that television will be controlled much more naturally. It will be more intuitive, like the Xbox, following body movement and facial recognition like project natal.” Mr Highfield told the Daily Telegraph.

Ok for those who don’t know, Project Natal is Microsoft’s controller-free motion sensing system for the Xbox 360 which will allow users to interact with the Xbox without using a control.

Instead, they will communicate with the Xbox using voice commands and body movements. The add-on peripheral for the Xbox uses a camera, a depth sensor and microphone to track the movements of the user and then will replicate that on the screen.

We first heard about Project Natal four months ago when it was unveiled at the E3 show in Los Angeles in June and it went down an absolute storm.

In Project Natal you interact with “Milo” a virtual character in the computer who will chat back to you just as a normal person would. Milo will recognize your face, greet you by name, and detect changes in your facial expressions and in the tone of your voice.

“TV will increasingly go that way,” said Mr Highfield.

“This is certainly the last generation that will have a remote control”.

I have no problems ditching the remote, always losing it anyway. What’s really exciting about the Project Natal kind of technology though is how it could change everything about our lives. This really is ground breaking stuff.

Only problem is we aren’t going to be able to try out Project Natal until some time towards the end of next year. Shame!

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