And it begins.. Kinect for Windows Media Center (1 Viewer)

[mattCR]

http://www.themediacenterproject.com/KinectForMediaCenter

Kinect for Media Center is an application that interacts with my Media Center Remote Command Listener to control a Media Center computer using Hand Gestures and Voice Commands, utilizing the Kinect for Windows hardware. The Hand Gestures and Voice Commands control the Media Center interface, as well as any add-ins running inside Media Center. This includes popular add-ins such as Netflix, MyMovies, Media Browser, and Heatwave.

Does not currently support the XBOX Kinect, just the Windows Kinect device, though someone will change that I'm sure... but a great start.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Some day kids are going to look at remote controls the way today's kids look at rotary telephones.

 

[mattCR]

Yep. I'm going to set this up over the weekend and see how it goes.

 

[ChristopherG]

Matt - hope you got to play with this over the weekend - looking forward to your report!!

 

[mattCR]

I did. First, let me say it doesn't work with the XBOX Kinect, you have to get the PC (or I had the developer one, available in the Windows store)


The functionality is frankly far better then I thought. There are some glitches, but it's early. Still, I was able to easily change change titles, start and stop films, manage media browser. No matter what I did though, I was unable to get much functionality in the Netflix app.. I'm unsure of that. But this seems like an early start. Still, I have to tell you the method by which it worked was surprisingly effective. I will have a further review later, after a new version is published, with some pics and details

 

[ChristopherG]

Cool

 

[steve118x]

Here is an alternate Kinect for Media Center app. Importantly , it doesn't try to do stuff just cos it's cool. It's designed to make things easier, not harder, so no having to stand up waving your arms. Most things like scrolling a bit left or right are best done with a remote. But for a small proportion of things , voice control comes into it's own. such as selecting music, you can just jump right to it, whereas a remote can take a bunch of button presses etc.. here's a demo vid of what it does it uses haarcascades technology , so you can use two postures, (while sitting) to control when the Kinect is listening for commands. more on the tech here http://www.amuletdevices.com/blog/index.php/amulet-voice-kinect-%E2%80%93-part-1-using-haarclassifiers-so-you-can-sit-down.html you can get the free download here http://www.amuletdevices.com/index.php/Features/kinect.html you can use it with an Xbox Kinect as it's non-commercial Steve.