Toshiba Cevo TV face recognition tech explained

Today's TVs haven't quite gone all SkyNet and become free-thinking machines ready to take over the world, but the arrival of Toshiba's new Cevo TV range means that they can now recognise just who is watching them.

This is because Toshiba's latest WL and YL series have cameras built-in which will pick up a person's face as they enter the room and adapt the viewing experience to their tastes.

This is all done with a mix of facial recognition – much like you would find on a digital camera – and Toshiba's new Personal TV feature.

For it to work, you need the television to first map your face. Once this is done,

you can create a TV profile for yourself.

This Personal TV profile can be used every time you switch the TV on.

The feature is designed to help create profiles personal to each user's viewing habits, so that when you walk in the room you don't have to meddle with the TV to suit your tastes.

Using an integrated camera and face recognition tech, Personal TV allows up to four users to create their own profile containing a variety of personal preferences, remembering their favourite viewing options, sound levels and picture settings, as well as the personalised channel list.

The integrated camera is clever enough to uses face recognition technology to identify each user at start-up, and will automatically apply that user's preferred settings.

It also switches the TV to standby mode if it thinks nobody is watching the TV for a long time, so you better stop giving your TV a blank look.

Face-recognition on a TV is an advertisers' dream, as knowing who has hold of the remote means you can tailor advertising around specific people instead of using demographics.

For now, though, Toshiba is using the technology purely to offer a better user experience to the TV watcher but it will be interesting to see how far the technology is taken in the future.