MUMBAI: Speech recognition technology is more popular than ever and in the past few months alone with related announcements from Amazon, Apple, and Google.

Comcast launched the cable industry’s first voice controlled TV remote earlier this year and the response has been terrific with nearly 1.5 million homes now having one. What’s more Comcast is distributing about 70,000 new remotes each week.

“Users are speaking aloud to find titles, channels, actors and actresses as well as to record, tune, fast forward and rewind. Last month alone, there were 20 million voice commands made using our new remote.

We’ve added some fun features too: quoting certain movies gets you to the film just as fast as a title search, Taylor Swift talks back when you search for her songs, and our remote happens to speak perfect Minionese,” said Comcast Cable executive director, product management Jeanine Heck.

Now Comcast has added another interactive component in partnership with the Cartoon Network, which will be especially entertaining for kids.

“It turns out that one of our most ‘voice-searched’ titles is Teen Titans Go!, a Cartoon Network fan favorite. Now, just by saying ‘Hello Beast Boy’ or ‘Boy Wonder,’ viewers are taken to the show’s homepage on X1 and will hear a special audio greeting from one of the characters. They also can say the names of other Titans like Cyborg, Robin and Raven and hear responses unique to each character,” Heck added.

Comcast is planning add more new functions to its voice remote over time.