Sony Corporation

Hidemi Tomitsuka

Shiro Omori

Hideaki Ishioka

Seiichi Misawa

Asako Tamura

Yasuhiro Chigusa

An instruction for operation mode control of a VTR 40 and information on the video recording reservation is voice inputted. The voice input is recognized by a voice recognition circuit 13 and is fed to a control circuit 15. The control circuit 15 controls the VTR 40 in response to the instruction or information of the voice input and causes an animation character generating circuit 16 to generate a video image of an animation character AC for displaying it on the screen of a CRT display 30. A message from the animation character AC is voice synthesized in a voice synthesizing circuit 19 and the synthesized voice is outputted from a speaker 20. The electronic equipment can be operated as if the user were talking with the animation character, so that a natural man-machine interface can be realized.

Control apparatus for electronic equipment

In an apparatus for timer reservation recording, previously inputted reservations for a program are recorded in a habit database together with a degree of certainty which is reviewed according to the frequency of reservation inputting for the program. When a timer reservation is made, reservations are found in the habit database and displayed in order according to their probability of being for the same program for which a reservation is being made, thereby assisting the user to easily and positively make a timer reservation for a desired program.

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Kanagawa, Japan

Hidemi Tomitsuka