Misplaced remote controls might soon become a thing of the past. Hitachi "Gesture" TV allows you to use your hands to do everything from change channels, navigate menus and even turn the TV on or off [video].

How does it work? Hitachi's image sensor, already integrated at the bottom of its own flat-panel TV, captures the motion. By simply waving a hand in front of a TV, a user can turn on the TV. By moving a hand up and down, he activates a menu display. To adjust volume, the viewer makes circular movements.



Don't get too excited yet. Last September, Hitachi showed off something they call "Gesture" TV at CEATEC, the Japanese consumer electronics show. A more impressive and responsive prototype was then shown at CES this past January. The prototypes require you to be pretty close for the image sensor to work. Close enough to the TV in fact that it might just be faster to just push the power button rather than use a special choreographed hand motion. Hopefully in a few years we'll be able to wave goodbye to remote controls.


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Labels: ces, gadgets, tech news