Mobile Phone Controls TV's

NEC is using an infrared (IR) transceiver from Agilent Technologies in its new mobile phone, that will also act as a TV remote control in the house.

With the Agilent HSDL-3002's IR port, the NEC N504iS mobile phone provides cordless communications functions such as exchanging pictures with other handsets. In addition, the transceiver can also control TVs and VCRs up to 6 meters (approximately 20 feet) away from the handset. A preinstalled application supports remote control of Sony, Sharp and Panasonic televisions. For other devices, users can download remote control data configurations from an NEC-operated i-mode site or, since the N504iS is a smart remote, it can record signals from existing IR remotes to control other entertainment devices and home appliances.

The NEC N504iS -- introduced by NTT DoCoMo in Japan in late November 2002 -- is equipped with a 1.9-inch, 4,096 color STN (supertwist nematic) LCD and supports data transmission speeds up to 28.8 Kb/s. Its 310,000-pixel CMOS image sensor camera includes a "Access Reader" OCR function, which can capture alphanumeric data such as e-mail addresses, URLs and phone numbers on business cards.

"Today's mobile phones incorporate both IR ports and an incredible amount of data processing capacity, which means that the addition of the capability to record and transmit remote control signals is easily added," said Kee Hane Ngoh, operations manager of Agilent's Infrared Products Operation. "NEC's experience shows other manufacturers that they can increase the value of their products at very little additional cost."

Posted to the site on 9th May 2003