Reinventing the IPTV Remote

The Hardware that supports IPTV in the home historically has been the last candidate for innovation, leaving stalwarts such as the “up, down, left, right” remote control unchanged since its inception. Yet this is slowly beginning to change, as dynamic interfaces and more content than ever before call for new browsing methods. Innovative remote control design, while still in the early stages, is poised to reinvent the IPTV navigation experience.

Hillcrest Laboratories is one name that consistently comes up in discussions of innovative remote control vendors. At January's Consumer Electronics Show, Hillcrest and Texas Instruments introduced the first remote based on the emerging radio frequency for consumer electronics (RF4CE) standard, which eliminates the line-of-sight limitations of infrared (IR) devices. The cost of adding RF technology to equipment is about 10 times the cost of integrating an infrared chipset, which runs about 20 cents, said Jason Blackwell, senior analyst with ABI Research. Because of that expense, he expects new designs to slowly start the transition to RF, growing at 55% annually through 2014. Blackwell described the remote evolution as a long, drawn-out process, although the first iterations of RF designs already are shipping in Japan. Consumer electronics (CE) vendors in the U.S., including RF4CE member Sony, are only in the early stages, hoping to drive usage by early adopters then ramp up volumes and drive down costs to take RF mainstream.

“There is a lot of interactivity that is missing in the digital home,” Blackwell said. “The move from IR to RF can really enable all of that interactivity and enable two-way communication between the remote control and the device it's controlling. That is the main driver on the CE side, and on the [set-top box] side it's really trying to enable two-way communication and deliver some sort of information back to the user via the remote control.”

RF devices also can sense the status of the devices they control, eliminate the need for line of sight and allow users to input information through more evolved interfaces. Consumers aren't yet demanding these features, but Blackwell said if vendors can make them aware of the benefits, adoption will follow.

“The remote works and has been in place for 25 years,” he said. “It does sort of what they need it to do. Once there is a little more education and marketing on some of these additional benefits, that could create consumer-side demand. But I think initially the move to RF will be a push, not pull.”

While Hillcrest has RF and hybrid RF/IR devices on the market, what it is best known for is its prototype Loop remote, a circular device that uses in-air pointing and motion control applications for gesture-based control. The Loop is designed for those consumers who attach their PCs to their high-definition TVs to browse Internet video sites, such as Hulu, and interact with that content on the TV. Andy Addis, executive vice president of marketing for Hillcrest, said this isn't a huge factor in the marketplace today, but the over-the-top (OTT) industry certainly is a growing market segment.