Video: a magic wand
A separate research group springing out of Philips' TV heritage is licensing the design for a sort of three-button wireless mouse that ultimately aspires to control any system on a home network, replacing multiple 40-button remote controls. The so-called uWand uses a combination of infrared and 2.4 GHz wireless links to project a cursor on a TV screen to let users select TV shows, movies or pictures.
Galileo Destura, a product manager for the uWand, demonstrated the device in a video.
"We want to make this available for any TV, not just those sold by Philips," said Navin Natoewal, general manager of the Philips Media Interaction group which could be spun off as a separate company depending on market acceptance of the device.
While much simpler to operate, the device could cost as much as $15 compared to about $3 for today's remotes. The group is in discussion with two possible partners, but so far no one has licensed the design which was released about four months ago.
"We hope to have licensees this year and see products in the market next year," Natoewal said.
The team will upgrade the design next year to support more complex gestures and work with other devices such as lights and digital picture frames. With the upgrade, the uWand could let users drag and drop a picture from the TV to a digital picture frame. The new version will also extend battery life from 35 hours based on three AAA batteries to 60 hours with two batteries.
The uWand is part of a trend toward gesture interfaces on the TV in the wake of the Nintendo Wii and Apple iPod. Other consumer giants are experimenting with embedding cameras on TVs to recognize hand and arm waiving gestures, but Natoewal said the approach had high failure rates in his tests.
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