See how TiVo is able to learn what kind of shows you like, and then suggest they might be recorded.
Well how about a set top box that can do something similar, and when you switch on to your own personal channel (different channels for different users), it selects the most appropriate show from all other channels and displays it.
If you overrule the selection, it will remember and so learns your preferences.
The more you use it, the better it gets.
You would get home from work, and it would know you want to watch The Simpsons, and then it would switch to the News. Perhaps it would then show the soaps, and then over to the movie channels for an action flick.
Also it would be aware of less regular events, and it would know, for example, that Football takes preference over the film of an evening or that repeats of Friends are less important than new episodes.
It could include a hard drive to do all that Tivo stuff as well.
-- MikeOliver, Jun 12 2004

If someone comes home exausted from a long days work, do expect that person to bicker with a stupid TV about what channels to watch? If this is implemented I see a lot of expensive big TV screens with bullet holes in the future.

If TiVo really wants to do people a favor the set top box should verify the selection itself by tracking pupil size or eye movement with a built in camera. It has to be able to do retina scans too to decide who is the boss (=TiVo subscriber) when several people ar in the room.
-- kbecker, Jun 13 2004


I recently read an write-up about how Tivo needs to improve its show suggestion set-up. The author feels that is the weakest aspect of the device, and believed it could benefit with some sort of web-enabled Amazon sort of arrangement, along the lines of a "people who watched this show also watched..." kind of thing.
-- waugsqueke, Jun 13 2004



random, halfbakery