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Sunflower Broadband now offering voice-activated search capability

By Caroline Trowbridge - | Nov 30, 2005

Sunflower Broadband, which provides cable television, high-speed Internet and telephone services in Tonganoxie, is offering a new voice-activated feature for digital cable subscribers.

The new service — called Promptu — is a highly accurate and powerful voice-activated search and navigation service that allows Sunflower subscribers to easily find their favorite programs by genre name of the program, network, actor or sports team, according to Sunflower officials.

A customer simply needs to press the “talk” button on a voice-activated remote and verbally make requests such as “CNN,” “scan movies” or “find Actor Jennifer Aniston.”

“Promptu allows our subscribers to easily and quickly find their programs of choice across both our digital cable packages and On Demand,” said Sunflower’s Patrick Knorr. “We are excited to introduce the Promptu service, and we see it as a great way to add value to our digital service and elevate our consumer experience at the same time.”

Promptu, which initially will be available to a limited number of Tonganoxie digital cable subscribers for as little as $2 a month, is a product of AgileTV Corporation.

Sunflower subscribers can sample Promptu first-hand at a demonstration station at the Sunflower office in Basehor, 155th Street and U.S. Highway 24-40, or at the Sunflower office in the Riverfront center at Sixth and New Hampshire streets in Lawrence.

Promptu requires no special training to use and is a self-install, “plug and play” service. The service utilizes an extensive database of more than 100,000 phrases and delivers higher than 90 percent voice recognition accuracy with a response time of less than one second, officials said.

“Sunflower is recognized throughout the cable industry as an industry leader delivering new, market-driven products to their customers and are widely respected for being first to market with new services” said David Hanson, AgileTV’s co-founder and senior vice president. “Sunflower is an important partner for our company and is delivering products that give cable subscribers a service that satellite can’t. We are confident this deployment will show what voice navigation does to unlock the overall value of digital cable.”

Sunflower Broadband is part of the World Company, a privately owned Lawrence-based media company that also operates eight area newspapers, including The Mirror.