Wow, this sure came out of left field. TiVo has applied for a patent allowing customization of remotes and PVRs based on personalized preferences provided via RFID. They describe a variety of scenarios and hardware such as providing customized hotel television viewing and adopting the technology within mobile multimedia devices. No telling when or if this will ever make it to market.
US Patent Application says: A multimedia mobile personalization system provides a remote control that detects a user’s electronic tag, e.g. an RFID tag. The remote control notifies a multimedia device of the user’s identity. The multimedia devices tailors it operations to the user’s preferences stored locally. Multimedia content such as broadcast or recorded television programs, music play lists, and the like could be sorted, displayed, or restricted, depending on the user identifier.
[Via New Scientist]
Aside from the “hotel” idea, I’ve always thought it would be a great idea to be able to personalize “logins” and see only the shows an individual is interested in. For example, our TiVo has a bunch of my wife’s soaps, my kids’ TV shows, and I’d love to have those filtered out by profile.
Why is RFID required to identify your self with a device?
Do you need a RFID chip to log onto your personal account on your Winods PC?
The the RFID tag/chip that worry’s people.
Wouldn’t you rather filter content at the push of a button into seperate “aldult”, “kids” sections or use a password/passphrase, rather than havign a RFID tag or somthing like a finger print.
I wouldn’t support finger print eaither as it teachers children to willing give there finger print when it has only previously been used in a police station.