LG's Remote Works Its Magic Using Nuance Dragon Voice Software

What if you talked to your TV? OK, so many of you do, particularly during political debates and football season... But what if you spoke to your TV and it did what you told it? And while I don't think it will command a beer to materialize out of thin air and find its way to your hand - let's at least admit that changing the channel and adjusting the volume would be a good start. Nuance Communications, the parent company behind Dragon Naturally Speaking, has officially spilled the beans that it is the brains behind LG's new voice recognition features contained within the company's Magic Remote. This is the new remote control we already disclosed in our coverage of their new LG CINEMA 3D Smart TVs.

Why is this news? Well, for one, manufacturers have thought that it was the physical format of the TV that was the most important aspect of making new sets attractive - and so we got flat and thinner TVs. Next came media streaming services, and now that seems to dominate every new set. 3D was next, and that seems to have become commonplace, despite that fact that there is little evidence that people even care to use it for any more than novelty experiences on rare occasions. Even with all of that willingness to adapt and evolve TVs, the traditional remotes and television guides have continued to fall behind. Voice is the one thing that promises to actually bring something new to TV that wasn't there before and which makes sense and actually becomes something that might revolutionize the way we consumer visual content.

The remote will initially support US English, American Spanish, Canadian French, and of course Korean. With the LG Magic Remote, people can simply speak to quickly find and immediately experience their favorite shows, movies, music and more. The explosion of digital media and content available on TV has far out-innovated the traditional TV remote control, making the content discovery process frustrating for consumers. And if you think regular consumers are frustrated, just think about those of us who swap out TVs and other source components on a monthly basis. LG's Magic Remote promises to completely alter the living room experience by capitalizing on the voice processing of Nuance’s Dragon voice recognition. The hope is that this will enable people to discover and access movies, music and games by name and, even actors and keywords. LG listed some example phrases which included:

• “Boston Red Sox”
• “College Football on FX”
• “Desperate Housewives”
• “Amazing Race”
• “Bradley Cooper”
• “Angry Birds”
• “Lady Gaga”
  

And, because LG's smart TVs deliver a connected experience, people can even use the voice capabilities on the Magic Remote to search for Web content by keyword or phrase, or access social media content like Facebook or YouTube.

"LG's smart TV portfolio was designed to give consumers a unique and unmatched living room experience, an array of entertainment and media content at their fingertips. And by integrating Nuance’s voice technology, it’s quickly and easily available with the spoken word."

- Taegil Cho, Vice President and Leader of TV Product Planning Group, LGE

Dragon TV is Nuance’s new interactive voice platform for TV, device and set-top box OEMS and subscription operators that that company hopes will make finding and accessing shows, movies and content in today’s digital living room easy and fun. Leveraging Nuance’s popular voice and language understanding capabilities, Dragon TV lets people just sit back while they quickly and easily find content by speaking – be it channel numbers, station names, show and movie names – and the ability to stay connected via Skype, Twitter and Facebook. 

LG's new Magic Remote will be made available in the first quarter (Winter/Spring) of 2012.

Unless otherwise indicated, this is a preview article for the featured product. A formal review may or may not follow in the future.