IBC — GreenPeak Technologies, a fabless semiconductor manufacturer, on Tuesday announced that many of the world’s leading cable and satellite TV providers are in the process of introducing interactive features and home entertainment capabilities that leverage a new generation of remote controls thanks at least in part to an industry standard known as ZigBee RF4CE.
The ZigBee Remote Control technology could fundamentally improve the consumer’s interaction with the set-top box.
“Remote controls are pretty mundane. On the other hand, operators in particular consider the remote control as the key point of interaction with the customer," GreenPeak Founder and CEO Cees Links said in a telephone interview with vision2mobile from The Netherlands.
Thanks to the ZigBee RF4CE standard, remote controls can cover larger areas, support infinitely greater battery life, penetrate walls and do not require line of sight, according to the ZigBee Alliance, a nonprofit organization founded nine years ago.
Some other capabilities include being able to find a misplaced remote control by pushing a button on the TV or set-top box – activating some kind of noise – and receiving and displaying messages on a remote control. For example, a cable TV provider might deliver an advertisement on the remote or remind a subscriber that a football game is about to begin, said Mark Shapiro, a spokesman with GreenPeak, one of several companies to adopt the ZigBee technology.
Links also said the advanced remote controls will support new applications ranging from casual gaming to purchasing an item on TV by holding a credit card next to the remote using near-field communication technology.
The ZigBee technology, Links indicated, is helping transform the remote from a “dumb device" to an “intelligent" one.
In the United States, EchoStar already has started using the ZigBee RF4CE devices, and Comcast has announced that it will ship the devices later this quarter, said Links, who was named marketing chair of ZigBee RF4CE in April. Several operators in Europe already have started shipping the remotes, added Links, who was a key player in the development of Wi-Fi technology.
The ZigBee RF4CE Steering Committee includes heavy hitters in the technology field, including Comcast, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba, among others.
