Korean scientists develop voice control system for PVRs and Video On Demand

Soon you may not need that remote control to find and play TV shows recorded on your favourite PVR.

South Korean scientists have a developed an innovative speech control system, which allows users to search for programmes and navigate menus with voice commands rather than words.

SKorea's state-run Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) has developed speech recognition software which allows the set to recognise TV shows, actors and other metadata as vocal commands, with 92 per cent accuracy. Viewers might soon be able to request VOD movies simply by asking their set top box for the show of their choice.

A lexicon database of more than 500,000 words can be stored in a set top box. The first user trials will begin later this year.

Study: TV can impair speech development of young children

A new study adds to the debate over whether television impairs children's language development.It found that parents and children virtually stop talking to each other when the TV is on, even if they're in the same room.

For every hour in front of the TV, parents spoke 770 fewer words to children, according to a study of 329 children, ages 2 months to 4 years, in the June issue ofArchives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.Adults usually speak about 941 words an hour.

Christakis and his colleagues fitted children with digital devices that recorded everything they heard or said one day a month for an average of six months. A speech-recognition program, which could differentiate TV content from human voices, compared the number of words exchanged when televisions were on or off.