NewTeeVee posted an article earlier this week that discusses technology being evaluated by Comcast to use embedded cameras in the set top box to do user recognition — as a mechanism for providing customized content on a per-user basis. A key quote from the article says:

The idea being that if you turn on your cable box, it recognizes you and pulls up shows already in your profile or makes recommendations. If parents are watching TV with their children, for example, parental controls could appear to block certain content from appearing on the screen. Kunkel also said this type of monitoring is the “holy grail” because it could help serve up specifically tailored ads. Yikes.

The “Yikes” is key here, because the article predictably generated a rash of responses down the lines of “Big Brother is watching me, and he’s at Comcast!”. So much so that Comcast exec posted responses to alleviate concerns that Comcast would actually be tracking faces and storing them — and correlating them with programming choices and more. Instead, the system which was being discussed was more down the lines of a gesture-recognition motion controller than a “say cheese” face recognition system.

So what to make of this? Well this isn’t the first time that we’ve heard a vendor or service provider think about some sort of biometric recognition as a mechanism for identifying the user, and serving up customized content. And — putting aside folks’ obvious concerns about privacy — this idea really seems to have some legs to us.

For example, when the kids are watching the TV, let the set top and the system identify them as such — to activate parental controls, to steer them to a customized program guide with only their favorite (and approved) channels. Or let the biometrics serve as part of an authentication and authorization system — so the babysitter can watch TV, but not order up the $65 Ultimate Fighting Challenge PPV while the parents are at dinner.

At the same time, we can see that despite the fact that consumers face an ever eroding base of privacy on a daily basis (between the trails they leave online, the vast credit databases built on most people and specific examples like giving away details about their spending habits with grocery store “club cards”), there are some lines that people may not want to cross when it comes to their privacy. We may get photographed dozens of times a day by security cameras as we go about our daily business — but a camera in our living room that’s not in our control may be a step too far.

For these technologies to be accepted there will probably have to be some sort of compromise. If a visually-based system is used, a provider is going to need to provide some strong privacy policies and some excellent customer education to let customers know exactly what is and isn’t recorded about them: is my face being recorded or not? Is it just recording my motions and gestures in a way that can identify me? What if I wander in front of the TV set after a shower? Does the authentication happen in the set top, or in the network? What’s stored and what’s not? The list goes on.

We’ve also seen some vendors of mechanical motion sensing systems talk about their ability to similar user identification — without the psychologically intimidating camera pointing at the user. If the simple act of picking up and using a remote can be mapped to a user profile without a camera staring at the user HAL-like, perhaps that’s the best approach to take.

Let us know what you think.