Philips Unveils Mystery 'Rotary Wheel' Tech

Philips claims to have unveiled a "revolutionary" new ROTARY WHEEL REMOTE CONTROL TECHNOLOGY "designed to enable quick and intuitive navigation of user interfaces & scrolling through content." Hmmmm. Sounds like the old iPod click wheel, no? The press release drones on in bad English: "This technology has been developed to allow easy management and selection to large amounts of digital content with the speed variable rotary wheel requiring fewer keys on the remote control. Compatible with set-top-boxes, DVDR and IPTV, the rotary wheel technology is designed to work seamlessly with an on-screen user interface." The release builds up to a for-more-information link, which leads to an error page. So much for "unveiling" the product. (The photo shows an older technology in the Philips SRU9600 Universal Remote Control. The first reader who produces a picture associated with this announcement gets a free subscription to my free newsletter.)