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Siri, did Samsung just beat you to the answer?
While Apple fans await a rumored “Siri TV” with a talking interface similar to the one embedded in the iPhone 4S, Samsung says it has already brought voice-control to the TV set.
The Korean giant unveiled a next-generation set at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas yesterday that combines two hot features — Siri-like voice command and Microsoft’s Kinect-like gesture control.
Steve Jobs, the late Apple founder, boasted to biographer Walter Isaacson of cracking the TV code, which many took to mean voice-activated commands.
“We’re giving consumers what they want now,” Samsung President Tim Baxter told The Post, describing how he beat rivals to the punch.
He wouldn’t talk much about Apple’s entry into the category, saying only, “It motivates us.”
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CES is lookin’ pretty Sharp.
The Japanese company took to the stage to show off its own Web-TV interface, dubbed SmartCentral, which it designed in-house.
That means Sharp is taking a different approach than rivals such as Sony, which teamed with Google for its smart TV needs.
Bob Scaglione, chief marketing officer at Sharp, tells us the company is still talking with Google about potential collaborations, but SmartCentral was a quicker route to market.
Sharp handled its own negotiations with content partners, and even landed one big name Google TV does not have — Hulu Plus.
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This isn’t your father’s satellite-TV company.
That’s the message from Dish CEO Joe Clayton, who declared 2012 a turnaround year for the company after unveiling a new super-fast Internet service and a powerful DVR system.
The “Hopper” DVR syncs with up to four rooms through smaller devices called Joeys — all named as part of a new marketing campaign featuring a kangaroo mascot.
The company will launch a surprisingly fast Internet service, called Dish Broadband, to appeal to users in rural areas with limited access to high-speed service.
Dish is also banking that it can woo consumers by bundling its recently acquired Blockbuster movie business with its satellite TV service.
“We’re taking on Netflix, we’re taking on cable, we’re taking on Hulu,” Clayton said after delivering his CES pitch that basically relaunched the entire company.
Clayton, who took over around the same time that Blockbuster was acquired by Dish about six months ago, said the integration has gone more slowly than he originally expected.
“When you have a $1 billion company, Blockbuster and a $14 billion company, Dish, which one do you think gets priority?” he asked us.