Honor TV launches next month with an AI-ready pop-up selfie camera. (Image source: Honor)Honor plans to launch its own TV during the Huawei Developer Conference on August 9 and the new television set could come with some unique features, including a pop-up AI selfie camera. However, this is not the first time that a TV has a camera at the front, nor will it be the first to come with facial recognition technology. Samsung’s SmartTVs back in 2012 also offered facial recognition.
The Honor TV will use Huawei’s Honghu 818 chipset with AI capabilities and details about the upcoming smart TV were revealed by George Zhao, President of Honor at the Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) in Guangzhou, China. Honor is calling this TV as the future of TV and according to Zhao, the company is not planning to do a traditional Smart TV.
The Honor TV or Smart Screen as the brand calls it will be powered by the Honghu 818 AI chipset and the pop-up camera will be aided by an NPU or Neural Processing Unit chip for AI-related tasks as well. Typically flagship smartphones like the Huawei’s P30 series or the iPhone XS have a dedicated NPU as part of their processor. The NPU will ensure face recognition is possible on the TV.
The Honghu 818 chipset will integrate Huawei’s Histen audio optimisation technology as well. The TV will likely run Huawei’s upcoming HongMeng OS, which is being pitched as an IoT OS.
Honghu 818 also has an image-processing engine, which the company claims is equipped with seven advanced image-processing technologies like Motion Estimate and Motion Compensation (MEMC), High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDR), Super-Resolution (SR), Noise Reduction (NR), Dynamic Contrast Improvement (DCI), Auto Color Management (ACM) and Local Dimming (LD).
This means is the chipset will be able to optimise the images on the big screen for colour, contrast, etc relying on various algorithms.
The chipset supports video decoding from 8K at 30 frames to 4K at 120 frames and decoding 64MP images, which is higher than most existing smartphones. This is an octa-core processor design to handle heavy-image processing on large screens and multiple tasks at the same time, according to Honor. The Honor TV will be on pre-sale starting today on Vmall, JD.com, Tmall and the Honor website, according to reports.
Back in 2013, LG had TV with a built-in camera
Honor TV with its pop-up selfie camera won’t be the first technically. Back in 2013, LG had implemented the idea of a camera on the front of the TV that would pop out when the user pressed on it and would let users take pictures and videos from this. LG also introduced an option where a user could attach a front camera module to their TV set, if it did not come with a built-in camera, where they could again take photos and videos.
Of course, what will change with Honor’s pop-up selfie camera on the front is that users will be able to rely on facial recognition with the camera to log into the Honor TV. Samsung has also offered facial recognition with its TVs in 2012, though these products are no longer listed on the company’s site.
