These days, set-top boxes for digital TVs are routinely updated with glitzy new software broadcast over the airwaves or sent down a telephone line in the small hours, unbeknownst to the owner. So as if by magic, new features you didn’t know you needed appear in the morning. But subscribers are finding their remote controls cannot work some of the new features.
Thomson of France is designing new remote controls that will have an infrared sensor as well as a transmitter, while the set-top box will have a transmitter as well as a sensor (WO 02/089086-7). After the set-top software…
