Filed under: Home Entertainment

AT&T’s been cobbling together a voice recognition system for decades, affectionally known as Watson. The good news is that unlike most every other voice recognition system out there, AT&T’s might be useful for, you know, stuff. AT&T’s working on making your plain-language utterances into real-life gadget actions, and has built a voice-operated TV remote to make the idea a reality. Built to operate the U-verse service, AT&T’s new mythical remote lets you ask for whatever comedies might be on, or — in the inexplicable example cited by our source article — search for movies starring Bruce Willis, all using your voice in regular person sentences. AT&T’s also working with other developers to build applications like a yellow pages app for the iPhone. There’s no word on when (or if) AT&T will actually offer up the remote for consumer use, or when other applications are due to hit the mainstream, but we must say we’re ready for the tide to shift in human-computer interaction, where the computer does the heavy lifting. Because we have some Bruce Willis movies to watch.

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

AT&T’s not messing around with spreading the good word on its U-verse services, as it has just nailed down an agreement to sell the aforementioned products in two of America’s largest retail outlets. Beginning this month, U-verse kiosks will emerge in over 600 Circuit City and Walmart locations, which will give unsuspecting consumers the chance to ditch their current cable / satellite / fiber provider and sign up for AT&T’s own programming / high-speed internet / digital phone suite. The move comes in the midst of its nationwide Total Home DVR rollout, which enables any connected TV in the crib to watch a recorded SD or HD show. Of course, U-verse still serves a comparatively small amount of the country at present time, but with an initiative like this, we feel pretty good about future expansion.

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

No surprises here, but AT&T is doing the right thing by getting official with its Total Home DVR — which we’ve been expecting for like, ever. A number of loyal U-verse users received word of the change last week, but now the provider is rolling the software out to the Bay Area at no additional charge; as for everyone else, expect to receive it before 2009 dawns. So, what’s so fresh about Total Home? Oh, just the ability to watch five HD programs simultaneously throughout the home, among other nice extras listed in bulleted fashion after the jump.

Continue reading AT&T gets official with U-verse Total Home DVR

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Filed under: Wireless, Networking

AT&T, continuing to be the open, giving, and free-wheeling loony that it is, has decided to bestow cost-free access to its 10,000+ WiFi hotspots (for its broadband subscribers, that is). Effective immediately, if you’re tossing money the company’s way for any high-speed access, you can hop onto wireless networks in retail shops, restaurants, and airports free of charge… provided they’re AT&T networks. We know its a lot to handle, but get this — the telco has also upped the speeds of its U-verse service to a whopping 10 Mbps downstream / 1.5 Mbps upstream configuration, undoubtedly warming the hearts of AT&T subscribers hankering for a little more bandwidth to sustain their ever-increasing ‘net needs. It’s like the holidays all over again.

Read - AT&T To Deliver Free Access To Nation’s Largest Wi-Fi Network
Read - AT&T Boosts Bandwidth Choices and Speed with 10 Mbps Offer for U-verse Customers

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