Is voice-recognition software ready for consumer products?
There are two types of speech recognition: dictation, and command and control. Dictation is the type most people think of when you talk about speech recognition. You sit down and write a letter by dictating to your computer. Command and control, which we use for our Media Center Controller, is a little further along. Does a consumer need to train the system to his voice? There is no training involved. We have a tutorial that takes a user through several steps to familiarize them with the system. Because we use command and control, there are a limited number of terms for the system to recognize, and we are able to provide a finely tuned experience with the entertainment system without training. What are the advantages of voice control? It takes several steps to click through the Media Center menus with the remote. If you have an extensive media collection, you also have to scroll through a lot of files to find the song you want to play or the photos you want to display. I can say “play
