Who doesn’t love watching TV?! It’s a hobby that isn’t age specific or place specific or gender specific. Everyone loves Mr. Telly. Whether you’ve had a manic day at school or work or at home with the little ones and chores, the TV is like a balm for a bruise. Even in an age when the television is being sidelined by big guns like smartphones, desktops, laptops and more, your TV is still one of your best pals. You don’t have to worry about mobile data, slow connectivity, no connectivity, videos that take hours to load, or any of that. At the end of a long day, you just throw your cares away, stroll into the room, plop onto the sofa and… your remote is probably lost. After struggling the entire day to keep your head above the water with work, the last thing you need is to lose your remote when your favourite show is minutes away from starting.
This is where Sensara’s ‘Sensy Smart Remote’ comes into play. But before we go into what it does, it is important to know that this remote isn’t really a piece of hardware, but is actually a kind of software. To put it plainly, the tech – which is actually called the ‘Sensy India TV Guide & Remote’ – is an app that transforms your smartphone into a TV remote. Working with any phone that supports InfraRed, the app can turn that phone into a remote, including models like the Samsung Galaxy S3, S4, S5, S6, Note 2, Note 3, Xiaomi Mi4, HTC One M7, M8, M9, and others. However, if your phone doesn’t have InfraRed, the app works along with the ‘Sensy Home,’ a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to InfraRed (IR) bridge that allows a smartphone to control the set-top-box, hence, turning it into a smart remote. Also, the tech supports remotes for all major set-top boxes, both DTH and cables like Tata Sky, Airtel Digital, Reliance Digital, Dish TV, Videocon, Hathway, Den, In Digital, and All Digital, among others.
The Sensy Remote is designed and developed by Sensara, a Bengaluru-based company that is “redefining how people interact with television, by analysing multimedia streams, text, sensors, hardware, by redefining TV lifestyle.” The app is a boon to users since it saves you the trouble of having to memorise which number you need to punch in to get to your favourite channel. All your channel information sits right on your smartphone screen. Even if you have a phone with no InfraRed, Sensy will provide you with a TV guide for all your channel details. But what is absolutely sensational about the Sensy Remote is that you can just talk to it if you want to watch something! That’s right. If you want to watch Zee Studio for instance, you just say so and your smartphone (via the app) will click to Zee Studio. Even more extraordinary is the fact that the Sensy Remote functions even on a keyword search basis. So, if you say ‘Kareena Kapoor,’ the remote will let you know which channel a programme featuring the actress is playing on. How cool is that! In this way, you can search by a show’s name, genre, and more.
That’s not it. You can even use voice search to turn up the volume on your TV, change channels, and perform other functions just by speaking to your phone. The app lets you navigate through channels and shows via easy filters like ‘genre,’ ‘language,’ and the like. You can even let Sensy know which are your favourite channels, so it remembers them the next time you want to tune in. So, if you’ve had a busy day, you don’t need to sift through a few hundred channels to find your favourite; you just click one button on your device and enjoy! In fact, according to Google Play, with Sensy, you can search across an insane 450 channels, 9800 shows, and 14 languages.
The smart remote is so keen on giving you a revolutionary TV viewing experience that it even shows you what is currently playing on various channels, even going as far as to report the Ad Break status on your favourite channels. If you’re tied up with work and are afraid you may miss that season finale you’ve been aching to watch, no worries, Sensy will remind you when your show is about to start. The tech can recognise your shows and films; it samples audio coming out of your TV, and autom
atically figures out the shows you’re watching. And if all of this isn’t enough, the smart remote even lets you connect your TV to sundry apps like Flipkart, BookMyShow, YouTube and so many others. You can make an e-commerce purchase, link a song to Saavn, and a lot more, just using your TV and Sensy.
Boasting advanced machine learning that lets it do all of the above, this “intelligent traditional remote” is a true winner. It is no wonder that Sensara bagged an mBillionth Award this year in the Media and Entertainment category, for its Sensy app and Sensy Home system. With tech like this, it looks like television is the new in-thing all over again!
