Microsoft's Kinect will be in PCs by 2011

"What will be fun is to see 2 or more people trying to watch different channels, as there will be no more THE remote and anyone can change the channel with gestures. LOL."

That would be funny but they already have that worked out. The kinect can scan faces and identify people with their profile. So if someone goes up to the tv and it scans them they can select their profile and you can just have only that person be able to control it. It already works with the xbox 360 like this.

I half expect then that for this to appeal to anyone by next year that it should have USB3.0 and a dedicated processor, cause who needs an extra webcam? or for the device to eat up hardware processing threads the way it does on 360.

http://gizmodo.com/5365507/worlds-first-usb-30-webcam-streams-uncompressed-1080p-video ?

Microsoft can interpret this middle-finger salute with their "Kinect" system. Why would I trust the secretive, closed-source Microsoft to continuously point two cameras at me while I am using my PC?

I don't trust their "mysterious" software, and I certainly think that people should think carefully over whether or not they want Microsoft analyzing their every move (or recording video of them, as the case may be) with their proprietary "Kinect" system. At least with open-source software (and hardware) you have an inkling of what is going on with "your" computers.

So Mr. Ballmer, you can go "Kinect" yourself, IMHO.

Well, the first to use it would be the porn industry. Motion capture ... and to animation series. Japanese will love it ... and finally start buying 360 consoles :)

It is unfare to compare Sony eye with Kinect simply because the tech behind Sony Eye was not good enough to reliable full body capture. Kinect is much better in that sense and so can become a success. The point about small screens and 6ft space is true now, but in the next couple of years huge LED based screens will become a reality and so gaming on that screen will be very close to real field of view, so the immersion will be pretty real. Also, to have a good UI on a huge screen you really need a gesture based controller like in Minority Report. Controlling a computer with the monitor that looks like a wall in your room is pretty hard with a traditional mouse or a controller. On the other hand with Kinect like system you will be able to easily move things around the screen since the space next to you where you keep your hands is not huge and it is translated well into the huge monitor space. With a bit of extra AI the system will be able to recognize what you want and do it. To do the same with a mouse you would need to do lots and lots of desk scrubing... MS can finally be onto something huge with Natal/Kinect.

Ok so the technology started out as being developed for PC use so this shouldn't be a surprise. Anyway as a computer control method this should be briliant. In fact the better part of a year ago my brother was at a trades show where they were demonstrating a Minority Report style control system using 3 of the camera across multiple surfaces.

Personally one of the things I'm looking forward to with this camera system is in a couple years they'll probably have a good animation motion capture suite out. I mean the planned price on the xbox 360 version of the hardware is $150 in the US so figure that for the hardware plus a couple grand for the software suite and you have a fairly good home motion capture system for either CG animation or video game model animation capture which doesn't require you to spend thousands an hour for professional studio time. That said that's about as useful as it will ever be involving games because it's basically worthless as a video game control system. Seriously Kinect officially requires 6 ft of open space in front of your tv to work properly so realistically 8-10 ft and is useless for 95% of game types because it has no point of view control and you're limited by physical reality. This of course is why Sony went with a motion capture plus controller combo cause they learned that pure motion capture doesn't really work for gaming about 7 years ago with the Eyetoy on the PS2. Why MS wasn't paying attention I don't know.

I think you might be confusing Kinect with PrimeSense's own solutions. Kinect is PrimeSense hardware plus MS's software solution for user identification via body, voice, and face. PrimeSense has its own software for performing those functions. I do not think the PrimeSense VP was speaking about Kinect at all.

I'm glad to see that this tech will end up in PC's. Hopefully Msoft themselves will just make the Kinect thingy PC compatible so it can become the standard for PC like their 360 controller is the standard for gamepads now.

If they don't, you're gonna end up with 100 different versions of this tech and it'll be a crapshoot as to whether or not the brand of one you bought will work with certain games.

Still, the best thing about this tech on pc is the fact that pc's are so much more advanced than those consoles with their 2004 technology in them, and aside from the MASSIVE gfx improvement on pc, there will be some ridiculously awesome homebrew for this tech that will destroy everything Msoft, Nintendo, or Sony could ever put out.

...the idea of watching TV without a remote is quite interesting! It's a new era, just like when they invented the TV remote. No more lost remotes, no more flat batteries, no more errands from the couch to the TV stand to pick the remote...
What will be fun is to see 2 or more people trying to watch different channels, as there will be no more THE remote and anyone can change the channel with gestures. LOL.