Search is a very important element in delivering streaming content. If you are accustomed to using Spectrum cable TV on the west coast with it’s painful letter by letter title search input and visit family or friends on the east coast where they have the luxury of Comcast voice search, you are acutely aware of the difference. Apple continues to make important strides in the voice activated arena moving forward with granular queries.
Apple is among four companies to be honored with a 2017 Technical / Engineering Achievement Award for “Contextual Voice Navigation for Discovering and Interacting with TV Content,” with Comcast, Universal Electronics (UEI) and Nuance Dragon TV also receiving wins in the category.
Siri made its way to Apple TV in 2015 when Apple launched a fourth-generation set-top streaming device with a dedicated Siri Remote for interacting with the virtual assistant. Going beyond basic voice command functionality, Siri on Apple TV leverages artificial intelligence to drive user interactions.
At launch, for example, Apple promoted “What did he just say,” an automatic rewind feature that plays back a portion of a movie with closed captioning switched on.
Related to the Emmy win, Siri is able to parse through thousands of movie, TV and other streaming video titles via natural language interactions. With a vast catalog of iTunes content, and Universal Search hooks into third-party apps like Netflix, Hulu and more, Apple TV is capable of highly granular queries. For example, users can ask Siri to surface James Bond films starring Sean Connery, or action movies made in the 1990s starring Wesley Snipes.
Apple is no stranger to the Emmys, having previously won awards for both commercial content and technical work related to mobile streaming technology.
from Apple Insider
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