Rejoice lazy Netflix binge watchers! The streaming company has worked out an innovative new way for you to control your playback and browse through the cohort of TV shows and movies. And it is not another new feature but a hardware device, that wouldn’t require you to search for a remote or move your hands while watching your favorite shows.
At the annual Hack Day, a clutch of Netflix engineers decided it would be fun to hack a brain-controlled device called Muse headband. And this gave rise to a makeshift controlling device ‘Mindflix,’ whose functionality has been detailed in a short introduction video. This demo is highly melodramatic and edited but we’d love to try out this prototype for controlling our TVs.
Talking about the same, one of the engineers in the video says,
Instead of implanting chips in our brain for Hack Day, we decided to take this brain-reading headband to really put it to the test.
The video attached above shows one of the laziest persons in the world, one who is reluctant of moving even an inch to grab the remote. And he’s also the one who loses his remote every other day. And this mind-controlled EEG-detecting headset has been designed keeping a binge-watcher in mind.
As for how the headset operates, you just need to strap the same on your forehead and off you go. You now have the capability to move your head up and down or even sideways to browse through the interface of the Netflix application. And once you have exercised your neck and landed on a title, you just need to think of the action you want to perform. For example, the video asks the lazy man to focus on playing the said title and it just works.
Other Hack Day innovations that were presented by Netflix engineers include a gamut of features and projects. Picture-in-picture enables you to keep a check on what other profiles in your account are binge watching at the moment. Netflix for Good, on the other hand, allows the user to donate to a charity corresponding to the socially conscious content playing on the screen. There is also a Stranger Things-based Atari game as well.
While these are definitely some new and unique implementations of tech but might not ever make it to the final product. The blog post says,
they may never become part of the Netflix product, internal infrastructure, or otherwise be used beyond Hack Day.
