MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC RESEARCH LABORATORIES http://www.merl.com The Prospects for Unrestricted Speech Input for TV Content Search Kent Wittenburg, Tom Lanning, Derek Schwenke, Hal Shubin, Anthony Vetro TR2006-045 May 2006 Abstract The need for effective search for television content is growing as the number of choices for TV viewing and/or recording explodes. In this paper we describe a preliminary prototype of a mul- timodal Speech-In List-Out (SILO) interface in which users’ input is unrestricted by vocabulary or grammar. We report on usability testing with a sample of six users. The prototype enables search through video content metadata download from an electronic program guide (EPG) ser- vice. Our setup for testing included adding a microphone to a TV remote control and running an application on a PC whose visual interface was displayed on a TV. ACM Advanced Visual Interfaces, May 2006 This work may not be copied or reproduced in whole or in part for any commercial purpose. Permission to copy in whole or in part without payment of fee is granted for nonprofit educational and research purposes provided that all such whole or partial copies include the following: a notice that such copying is by permission of Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.; an acknowledgment of the authors and individual contributions to the work; and all applicable portions of the copyright notice. Copying, reproduction, or republishing for any other purpose shall require a license with payment of fee to Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright c Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc., 2006 201 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139