Comcast's Creepy Experiment Puts Cams Inside DVRs to Watch You
Travis Hudson writes on Today @ PC World:
In a scene straight out of 1984, Comcast said it will begin placing actual cameras in DVR units to track data for who is watching the digital television.More here.
This statement is so farfetched I almost don't believe it, but it came out of the mouth of Gerard Kunkel, the senior vice president of user experience for Comcast. At the Digital Living Room conference he said that Comcast is already experimenting embedding cameras into DVR boxes that actually watch the television watchers. Big Brother, anyone?
Comcast is shilling this as a type of customization features. The camera would be capable of recognizing specific individuals and therefore loading a user's favorite channels and on the other hand block certain content as well. Stop the schtick, Comcast. Nobody, and I mean nobody would ever voluntarily allow you to place a camera in a household, for any purpose. It's a shame that I can already imagine the headlines when Comcast does this involuntarily.
posted by Fergie @ 3/21/2008 09:52:00 AM
2 Comments:
it sounds more like a scene out of Max Headroom...
Comcast =? Net23
The newteevee.com article "Comcast Cameras to Start Watching You" portrayed some assumptions that require correction and clarification. I want to be clear that in no way are we exploring any camera devices that would monitor customer behavior.
To gather information for this article, the blogger picked up on a conversation between Gerard Kunkel and another person at a recent conference. They were discussing the various input devices offered by a variety of vendors that Comcast is reviewing.
The camera-based gesture recognition device is in no way designed to - or capable of - monitoring your living room. These technologies are designed to allow simple navigation on a television set just as the Wii remote uses a camera to manage its much heralded gesture-based interactivity.
We are constantly exploring new technologies that better serve our customers. The goal is simple - a better user experience that allows the consumer to get ever increasing value out of their Comcast products.
As with any new technology, we carefully consider the consumer benefits. In fact, we do an enormous amount of consumer testing in advance of making a product decision such as this. We're confident that a new technology like gesture-based navigation will be fully explored with consumers to understand the product's feature benefits - and of course, the value to the consumer.
Frank Eliason
Comcast Executive Offices
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