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Voice-navigation specialist, AgileTV, has signed a predeployment agreement with Sunflower Broadband–a regional cable operator that has also deployed Digeo’s Moxi platform–to evaluate marketing strategies for the introduction of AgileTV’s voice-activated search and navigation service, Promptu. The companies say that Sunflower will begin a market-wide deployment of Promptu by the summer of 2006. Promptu allows cable subscribers to give voice commands to their EPG by pressing a "talk" button on a special microphone-equipped remote control. Subscribers can, for example, tune to a channel by saying its name or channel number; tune to a currently airing program by saying its name; view a list of programs in a particular programming category by saying "scan" and the name of that category (e.g. "scan news" or "scan sports"); conduct a search by saying "find" and the name of a program, actor or sports team; and use a series of simple voice commands to navigate through the EPG and schedule recordings on a DVR, or to browse and play VOD content and use a VOD service’s "trick-play" features (i.e. fast-forward, rewind, pause, etc.). The technology, which is based on a server-centric architecture and which currently works with Motorola DCT2000 and DCT2500 set-tops, makes use of a dynamically managed database of over 100,000 phrases, and, according to AgileTV, delivers over 90% voice recognition accuracy.
Sunflower Broadband and AgileTV will launch Promptu next month to customers in the Kansas communities of Lawrence, Tonganoxie, Basehor, and Piper. The companies say they will educate consumers about the service via such tactics as payments center demo stations, VOD spots, and door-to-door sales teams with DVD players.
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