What you say is true, but it is a good thing and you make it sound like a bad thing. Having the remote buttons means you have more choices, more power, more flexibility. These are the concepts that I have tried to build VC around. Pushing the buttons, is not always going to be better or faster, but in situations where it is, then you'll be happy to have them, and like you say they cannot replace the more complex commands that VC includes.
Notice in the video when the music starts playing because I accidentally held the remote up to my mouth while I was talking. Did you see how quickly I was able to pause the music with a voice command. In fact if I had tried to use the buttons on the remote in that situation, I would have first needed to look down and locate the pause button (not possible if you are blind
), then point the remote at the IR receiver (not practical from where I was sitting
) and then push the button.
Now on the other hand, when you are browsing content, when you don't know what you want and you just want to scroll through the options using arrow keys etc. then having to use voice commands will probably be a bit of a chore, so in that case you'll be very happy to have the buttons there as an option.
This device is obviously not be the perfect solution for all possible situations, but it is one more tool to choose from. I think the ideal would be if we could have a sister device that operated on the same RF dongle, which was basically just the microphone with an on off switch of some kind. It is only a matter of time. I know that Amulet will continue to come up with new ideas, and if they don't do it someone else will.
All I can say is, I am glad to see the direction that things are heading. What we are able to do today, would have seemed impossible a few years ago, and the possibilities grow every day. As new devices and improvements to speech recognition engines become available, we will be there, ready to take advantage of the tools.
