If you have some tinfoil handy, now might be a good time to fashion a hat. At the Digital Living Room conference today, Gerard Kunkel, Comcasts senior VP of user experience, told me the cable company is experimenting with different camera technologies built into devices so it can know whos in your living room.
The idea being that if you turn on your cable box, it recognizes you and pulls up shows already in your profile or makes recommendations. If parents are watching TV with their children, for example, parental controls could appear to block certain content from appearing on the screen. Kunkel also said this type of monitoring is the holy grail because it could help serve up specifically tailored ads. Yikes.
Kunkel said the system wouldnt be based on facial recognition, so there wouldnt be a picture of you on file (we hope). Instead, it would distinguish between different members of your household by recognizing body forms. He stressed that the system is still in the experimental phase, that there hasnt been consumer testing, and that any rollout must add value to the viewing experience beyond serving ads.
Perhaps Ive seen Enemy of the State too many times, or perhaps Im just naive about the depths to which Comcast currently tracks my every move. I cant trust Comcast with BitTorrent, so why should I trust them with my must-be-kept-secret, DVR-clogging addiction to Keeping Up with the Kardashians?
Kunkel also spoke on camera with me about fixing bad Comcast user experiences, the ongoing BitTorrent battle and VOD. But he mostly towed the corporate line on these issues (the monitoring your living room came up after my camera was put away). (newteevee.com, 3.18.2008, Chris Albrecht) http://newteevee.com/2008/03/18/comcast-cameras-to-start-watching-you/