Hillcrest User Interface for Set Top Boxes

In March 2009, the New York Times reviewed the ZillionTV and said "It’s the nicest interface on a set-top box I’ve seen yet." The user interface is the HōME™ user interface from Hillcrest Labs. This is a uique, patented, 3D navigation system which can be viewed in full on the website by filling in a form. The user experience is one of moving into and through levels of menus in a highly intuitive way. The whole 3D experience is rendered as 2D flat images that scale away and zoom toward the viewer and so runs on just about any set top box.

The user interface design would not work with the tradition remote control unit. Instead Hillcrest license a patented pointer device design kit called Freespace. This is a design kit for building an in air pointer device, including reference designs, software and hardware. Using the Freespace tech, Hillcrest have developed a ring shaped device with a thumb wheel, two buttons and a pointing device (accelerometer perhaps?) called the Loop Pointer.

Together, this hardware/software solution produces stunning results and is one of the few demos that truly uses 3D in an experience enhancing way. I have never used it, and my previous experience of pointing devices on set top boxes has been that they lose calibration quickly. Hopefully Hillcrest have overcome this. The Loop Pointer is available for $99.

One very interesting side effect of a pointer device is text input. Traditionally very hard on RCUs, a pointer device allows fast input by free navigation of a keyboard image. Hillcrest show this briefly in their video. This makes services like Twitter and so forth much easier.