Why am I calling my television silly?

I received an Invoca voice activated TV remote 3.0 for Christmas from my sister. It's a great gift, especially for someone who cannot turn the channels on a TV with a conventional remote.

It takes rechargeable batteries, which I didn't have, so I ordered those online and just got them today. After charging the Invoca remote, I synched it to my TV and cable box via the automatic function. Once that was done, I was ready to program some commands in.

I started with the ones in the brochure, such as "channel up/down", "TV power". All went well. Within a few minutes, however , my TV began to act as if it was haunted. Channels changed without warning - the TV went off and I swore I heard a voice from inside saying "I'm baaccckkk!" (OK that was my imagination.)

I decided, however, to set it up to use a keyword to precede each command so that the noise from the TV wouldn't cause the remote to "take over" my TV. You can imagine the fun it was to pick a keyword. How tempting to choose things like "Cyborg", "Robot", "Jeeves" , "HAL" - but I tried quite a few and realized I needed a distinctive word.

"This is silly, " I said to my cat. Then I tried the word "Silly" and it worked great. Silly it was.

So the keyword "silly" precedes everything I say. I am saying phrases like "Silly- Louder", "Silly- That other Sports channel", "Silly-Quiet" (that's the mute function). It's rather fun.

I can even program macro strings into this, to do things like play a VCR tape. You just enter a string of commands which are clearly outlined in the brochure. It's quite easy.

So as I sit here watching football instead of just one channel that I can't turn off, my only complaint is that when the announcer remarked "Now that's a silly play" the channel switched to Bravo. Not a problem.

I say "Silly- previous channel."

I give this 5 stars.