The story of Comcast’s desire to know who’s in your living room has certainly touched off a web-wide frenzy, starting in our comments section and finding its way into The New York Times.
Gerard Kunkel, Comcast senior vice president of user experience, and the man interviewed for the original story, responded in our post comments section. In the interest of fairness, we wanted to give Mr. Kunkel’s response more prominence.
Chris,
Your article on “Comcast Cameras to Start Watching You” portrayed some assumptions that require correction and clarification. I want to be clear that in no way are we exploring any camera devices that would monitor customer behavior.
To gather information for your article on Comcast’s exploration of cameras you picked up on my conversation with another conference attendee. The other attendee and I were deep in a conversation discussing a variety of input devices offered by a variety of vendors that Comcast is reviewing.
The camera-based gesture recognition device is in no way designed to – or capable of – monitoring your living room. These technologies are designed to allow simple navigation on a television set just as the Wii remote uses a camera to manage its much heralded gesture-based interactivity.
We are constantly exploring new technologies that better serve our customers. The goal is simple – a better user experience that allows the consumer to get ever increasing value out of their Comcast products.
As with any new technology, we carefully consider the consumer benefits. In fact, we do an enormous amount of consumer testing in advance of making a product decision such as this. I’m confident that a new technology like gesture-based navigation will be fully explored with consumers to understand the product’s feature benefits – and of course, the value to the consumer.
Sincerely,
Gerard Kunkel
I responded to Mr. Kunkel in our comment with the following:
Hi Mr. Kunkel,
Just to further clarify. After you granted me our initial video interview, you brought up the topic of Comcast knowing who was in the living room in a conversation between you, myself and another conference attendee.
I actually left and came back to follow up on this point while you were talking with that same attendee. At this point, you were aware that I was a reporter and I took handwritten notes in front of you as we talked to make sure I had an accurate accounting of what you were saying.
I’d love to talk further with either you or someone else at Comcast to follow up on this story.
[...] Newteevee: [...]
Chris–
Gerard used the exact same response Comcast’s PR director Jenni Moyer used in another blog. Check it out: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/2008/03/comcasts-creepy-experiment-puts-cams.html. You’d think Comcast would at least know to mix it up a little. Oh well….
Ooops: try this link: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/2008/03/comcasts-creepy-experiment-puts-cams.html
LOL @ everyone thinking Comcast is going to be watching you in your living room. Takes a pretty stretched imagination to actually believe that. Gullible, anyone?
GMC lost me by pushing OnStar spy system in all their vehicles.
Marriott lost me when they played big brother and told me I could not smoke in a hotel room
Comcast has lost me now just be Proposing this kind of technology.
No thanks comca(spy)cast
People are very stupid to think Comcast is putting a
camera in your living room.
What you will see…..is a 2-way video telephone that will be displayed on your TV. You will be able to make a phone call
to a grand-child or your mother in a different state and be….able to see them and they see you.
2 way video phone is the next step but I can hear the critics
now…..what is Comcast up to now?
These were the same people….when radio and TV came out to the public for the first time and called it witchcraft.
Grow up people.
The PATRIOT acts gives an unlawful green light for the government to spy on you by whatever means they choose, withourt a warrant. Are there really any people so naive that think this is just a benign “feature”?
When you don’t want the camera to see what you’re doing, put a piece of tape over the lens. . .
To be sure,when they come out with a cable box that can respond to voice commands, it could always be listening. But this will be the golden opportunity to tell them about the aliens! And they’ll have to listen!
[...] Check out Comcast’s Response [...]