30 Rock's Jack Donaghy, as played by Alec Baldwin, had the same idea Apple has for their upcoming HDTV: ditch the remote and use your voice to control your TV. However! His TV hilariously failed because the voice recognition software was too good.
Donaghy's VoAct, short for Voice Activation, is so much like what we're hearing Apple's HDTV is going to be it's uncanny. TVs are hard to use because remotes suck, yadda and yadda. So Jack Donaghy shows off his new voice activated solution and the demo goes off swimmingly! 'Television on' and 'Channel NBC' work just as you imagine. SO COOL. I want this immediately.
But then things go awry (as hilarious comedies tend to do). Like Siri, VoAct's voice recognition software is so good that when VoAct hears characters on a TV show talking, VoAct assumes it's a human voice command! Hearing words like off, high volume, mute and delete DVR in the TV show resulted in all that happening in real life. It's hilarious on 30 Rock but would be even more hilarious (and annoying) in real life. [AOL Video via Daring Fireball]