#ALGORITHMS: "Making every TV 'smart'"

Just as every cell phone is becoming smarter, TV manufacturers too are aspiring to make all they models smart. Smart TVs don't all have the same capabilities, but one element that is becoming essential is the ability to aim the remote at menu items in a point-and-click user interface. Usually that means burdening the application processor in the TV with interpreting the MEMS sensor data from an accelerometer or gyroscope, but by putting those smarts inside the remote itself, TV manufacturers should be able to upgrade more of their low-end models to Smart TV status. R. Colin Johnson


Hillcrest Labs has managed to downsize its Freespace MotionEngine algorithms to run entirely on the 8-bit microcontroller inside the Smart TV remote control.

Here is what EETimes says about making every TV smart: Hillcrest Labs Inc. announced Tuesday (Aug. 28) it downsized its motion processing algorithms to run on an 8-bit microcontroller inside a television remote control.

Known as Freespace MotionEngine Lite, the software allows nearly any TV manufacture to convert existing "dumb" models into Smart TVs merely by choosing the right remote.

All Smart TVs today run their motion processing algorithms on the 32-bit application processor inside the television, relegating the remote control to merely sending the raw sensor data from the MEMS accelerometer and gyroscope inside it...
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