Skip to main content

Multifaceted Remote Control Featured at CES


Always on the lookout for design innovation within the CE device remote control category, as you may recall I favor the minimalist approach -- where less buttons are better. Here's a new design that will be on display at CES.

RICAVISION International, Inc. announced the launch of the Ricavision Microsoft Windows Vista SideShow Media Center Remote Control, which makes use of the Vista SideShow auxiliary display platform to allow convenient access to information received from a Windows Vista-based PC.

The Vista SideShow Remote Control has a built-in 2.5 inch color QVGA LCD display that features Class 1 (100-meter) Bluetooth capability. Using Windows SideShow, applications can send data to an ecosystem of devices that can then send control commands back to the application on the PC. For example, an e-mail application can send the last 10 received e-mail messages to one of the devices, or the user can schedule a TV program to record on a Media Center PC.

Apparently the Ricavision package is also the only one that comes with an external USB RC6 receiver and with a Class 1 Bluetooth receiver. Translation: it turns the Vista PC into a Bluetooth computer capable of receiving data from any other Bluetooth device within a 100-meter range.

The remote control provides a set of four 'Gadgets' that will be an extension of the Media Center for Windows Vista including: TV, Music, Pictures/Videos, and Now Playing.

It offers more extensive Gadgets than ever, to enable the user to extract data from the Media Center in Windows SideShow XML format and send it through Windows SideShow to compatible devices, such as a remote control device, an LCD display panel, etc. It will also accept incoming navigation commands from the various devices and send them back to the Media Center.

Due to the development timeframe, these Media Center Gadgets will not be available as part of Windows Vista, but the Gadgets will be available separately for release during the Windows Vista RTM timeframe. The Ricavision Vista SideShow Remote Control and Receiver Kit has an MSRP of $199 and will be available in April of 2007. Visit RICAVISION for additional product details.

Popular posts from this blog

Frontier AI Peaked. Here's What Comes Next

The prevailing narrative around artificial intelligence (AI) has been one of relentless scale. Bigger models, bigger clusters, bigger budgets. The assumption, largely unchallenged until recently, was that raw parameter count translated directly into competitive advantage. New research from Omdia suggests it's time to retire that assumption. According to the latest market study by Omdia, parameter growth in frontier AI models has slowed to around 5 percent annually since 2021, a stark contrast to the more than hundredfold expansion seen between 2019 and 2021. Enterprise AI Market Development For executives who have been making infrastructure and investment decisions based on the assumption that AI would keep demanding ever-larger, ever-more-expensive hardware, this finding deserves serious attention. The race to the top of the model size leaderboard has, at least for now, plateaued. Crucially, Omdia's analysts are not reading this as an AI winter. Alexander Harrowell, senior pri...
Read more