Barb Gonzalez

Hitachi showed a prototype of a motion sensing TV that could be controlled simply by waving your hand in front of its sensor. On screen circles and arcs help you determine the volume levels and other controls. Simply applaud the end of your show (clap your hands) to turn the TV off. It’s estimated that this won’t be available until 2010 or 2011.

HDMI Licensing LLC, who won a Technology and Engineering Emmy for their contribution of the HDMI™ single cable audio and video standard, has announced the development of a new HDMI specification beyond the current 1.3 version. While not final, it is expected that the new standard will include transfer of Ethernet over the new HDMI cable. The other significant addition will be an “audio return channel.” Currently when a source—say, your HD satellite—is connected directly to a TV, an optical audio cable must be connected to an AV receiver to hear your satellite programming in surround sound. This new bi-directional feature brings it back to a single connection that will send the sound back to AV receiver without the need for an additional cable. Woohoo! We’re getting closer to a single cable connection, I’m all for that type of simplicity. Go HDMI!

With networked TVs and media sharing devices we can get online content from partners like YouTube, Netflix, CBS.com, etc. Now Boxee offers a software solution that creates an easy meny to find online content that works on computers including Macs and Linux-based operating systems. What’s really cool is that you can put the software on a flash drive and add it to an AppleTV. This adds the capability of watching many online streaming video partners including video streaming like Netflix, Hulu, CBS.com and MTV to the previously limited partners on AppleTV.

We’re hearing it again and again from many TV manufacturers. TVs are becoming the center of our home entertainment beyond broadcast TV, cable or satellite. Networked TVs that can download content from the internet and can show photos, play videos and music from the computers on your home network. All of the TV manufacturers from LG, to Toshiba, Sharp, Panasonic, Sony and Samsung were announcing their partnerships with different content providers. Yahoo widgets were omnipresent. These mini applications—widgets—let you get local weather, news, sports, stock tickers and more. As widgets you can choose the type of stocks you want to follow or put in other customizable information. Yahoo widgets are open source which means that software developers can let their imaginations run wild and we’ll all benefit from what they dream up.