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November 15, 2012

Now, Talking to Your TV Actually Achieves Something

By Tracey E. Schelmetic
TMCnet Contributor

Keyboards, touchscreens, on-screen navigation will soon be things of the past. It’s probable that in the not too distant future, we will interact with machines using the most natural of interfaces: our voices. While most people talk to their TVs regularly (“I can’t believe you dropped that ball, you fool!” or “Don’t go into that basement alone during a thunderstorm!”), in the past, our TVs have not generally responded. That is about to change.

Speech technology company Veveo is announcing this week that it has successfully integrated voice and natural language capabilities for television and video search, discovery and navigation with its SmartRelevance Conversational Platform. The company provides semantic solutions designed to help bridge the usability gap in connected devices and applications with intelligent search, discovery and personalization solutions.

The new conversational interface capabilities are available for trial by Pay TV and video services’ operators, connected device manufacturers, and set top box vendors. Veveo’s conversational interface solutions will be commercially available as part of its Reveal 3.0 product launch targeted for early 2013, said the company.

“Our conversational interfaces are a logical evolution of our deep semantic technologies currently being used by Tier-1 operators for natural, intuitive and intelligent search, personalization, and discovery features for multi-screen television and video services,” said Murali Aravamudan, founder and CEO of Veveo, in a statement announcing the launch. “Veveo’s new advanced features will enable users to interact with devices and services to get to desired programs through a natural and intuitive process rather than complicated guides and menus.”

Veveo says its conversational interfaces are designed to:

• Allow users to perform search and discovery universally across available services without the need for hierarchical navigation or structured menus prevalent in services today.
• Address navigational challenges for users through applying natural language understanding with Veveo’s core semantic technologies to make usability natural and intuitive.
• Build upon a proprietary Knowledge Graph and implicit personalization capabilities of its proprietary Personal Graph solutions to create hyper-personalized and efficient user experiences.

Veveo currently serves more than 45 million televisions in the U.S. and Canada with its Reveal 2 and Reveal 2.1 solutions that are used for advanced predictive search and personalization by operators. Veveo Pay TV customers include Comcast, Cablevision, Rogers, and DirecTV (News - Alert), along with Verizon FiOS as a licensee of Veveo’s patents.

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Edited by Brooke Neuman