Big Brother coming to a Comcast set-top box near you?

After a couple of months with their Tivo service I know EXACTLY what kind of wave I'd give our friends at Comcast through that camera.

The newteevee.com article "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 this article, the blogger picked up on a conversation between Gerard Kunkel and another person at a recent conference. They were discussing the various 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. We're 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.

Frank Eliason
Comcast Executive Offices