\n<\/p>\n
Typing on a TV sucks. Those long and \/ or scrambled on-screen keyboards are both a nuisance to use, and a real problem for anyone wanting to make stuff for your TV.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
At CES 2025<\/a>, I was just introduced to a better way. It\u2019s made by a company called Direction9<\/a>, which has been working on the system for about a year, and it starts with a very old way of typing: T9. T9 was created by necessity, back in the days when cellphones\u2019 only buttons were the number keys. (Here\u2019s a demo<\/a> for the uninitiated.) TVs are similarly constrained by their directional pad \u2014 on most set-top boxes and smart TVs there\u2019s no other way to type. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Direction9 system works like this: all the letters are arrayed in a three-by-three number grid, with multiple letters assigned to each number, just like T9. When you open the keyboard, your cursor defaults to the middle, and you click around to the letter you\u2019re looking for. Every time you click the middle button to select a letter, the cursor jumps back to the center, which means you\u2019re always only a click or two from the letter you\u2019re looking for. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n You can use the keyboard a \u201csmart\u201d mode, which tries to predict which word you\u2019re looking for \u2014 click the \u201cabc\u201d button, then the \u201cdef\u201d button, and then \u201cdef\u201d button again, and it might guess you were typing \u201cbed.\u201d You can also turn it off and type more manually: when you click on \u201cabc,\u201d it pops up a new array that lets you pick between letters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The rest of the keys you\u2019d need \u2014 Enter, Space, Back, and so forth \u2014 are arrayed around the sides of this grid. Direction9\u2019s trick here is that you don\u2019t actually have to press enter to select them; just click-click over to the Enter button and it automatically submits.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n