[Sci/Tech] Laser remote makes watching TV even lazier

[The Helper]

Modern-day remote controls can be complicated. But, thankfully, researchers are making TV the relaxing, mindless pastime that it was always intended to be with a new easy-to-use remote control. The controller is a laser pointer, which can be pointed at different options on a TV screen or other large display to control volume, channels, and make other selections.

As researchers Donato Pasquariello, Gilles Vissenberg, and Galileo Destura explain in a recent issue of the Journal of Display Technology, the laser pointer takes advantage of the intuitiveness of a touchscreen display, but with a longer range. The team is from the Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

The system, called “Remote-Touch,” involves three main components: the laser pointer, a micro-structured substrate that fits over the display, and position-sensitive photodetectors at the edge of the display.

Read more about it here.

 

[Asehujiko]

Downsides being:
It could get distracted by enviromental light.
You have to aim it properly(and when you are lying on your back and drunk, that's alot harder then it sounds)
It has the same effect as rigging up your computer to a beamer, exept with alot smaller screen.
I'll pass.

 

[Lord Kass]

I find pushing buttons easier