Easy TV for Seniors You Can Control From Your Phone

Transcript of Interview: “Easy TV for Seniors You Can Control From Your Phone”

Mike Barnes
I think one of the best things about technology is that sometimes things come around that can help us in so many ways. We’ve seen that in the past with lots of things, but now with caregiving there are lots of things that can help. 

Kim Barnes

I know that there are so many things that oftentimes technology makes things so much easier, but they can also cause some frustration for our parents and for us occasionally. Today we’re talking to Ashish Aggarwal, who is the CEO and founder of TV. Thanks so much for being with us.

Ashish Aggarwal
Today, Kim and Mike, it’s my pleasure to be here. 

Kim Barnes
I have to say—and maybe I’m the only one—but there are occasions when I get a phone call from my mom, who lives in a different city than I do, and she’ll say, “I’m having trouble with my TV, the internet’s not working right, or I can’t get to the channel again.” Sometimes I feel terrible that my first thought is, “Oh my gosh, this is going to take 15 or 20 or 30 minutes trying to manage this through FaceTime or walking her through it.” Often I wonder, wouldn’t it be nice if I could control it for her? And that’s what you’ve created.

Ashish Aggarwal
That’s exactly right, Kim. You know, and that dreaded Netflix password when you get logged out—just imagine that. Your mom calling and saying, “My Netflix is logged out of my account.” That was a little bit of the genesis of the product. What it does is it allows a remote caregiver using an app to see what’s on the TV and literally puts you right there. TV is the most accessible and familiar device for the senior, so we said why don’t we make it really simple for them, allow remote family caregivers to drop in, put any show or content they want to watch, fix any TV-related issues, and make those five or six hours that seniors watch TV really worthwhile. That’s really how we started this.

Kim Barnes
Right, so if Mom does log out of her Netflix password or getz stuck somewhere, I can actually just get her logged back in or get her where she needs to go?

Ashish Aggarwal
Yeah, you can just launch your app, see exactly what’s on her TV, and you can type in the password for her using your phone. And there you go.

Mike Barnes
Wow. Where did this idea come from?

Ashish Aggarwal
So, you know, we started as a universal remote company, and we had made a device that allowed a lot of content and devices to be accessed using a simple remote control. We saw a few seniors use it, including my mother-in-law. But there was one day during COVID I remember my mother-in-law asking my daughter, “Hey, how do I watch this?” My daughter was so excited—both my daughter and my mother-in-law. My daughter said, “Let me put it for you, Amama,” but she had to go there in person, physically. I thought, why do we have to? Today we do Zoom calls, we’re doing all this remotely—why couldn’t she just say, “Hey look, I’m going to just share this content with you on your TV”?

My mother was already using the universal remote, and then we layered on this mechanism where, using an app, you can see what’s on the TV and fix it. That’s really how it started as a genesis. Now you can see that rather than watching the same Hallmark Channel or maybe Fox News for many, many hours because it’s hard to find good content, parents can remotely help seniors put interesting content, whether it’s yoga videos or a live stream—like imagine Junior is playing a baseball game. Rather than watching a show on TV, you might, as we watch grandkids’ first Little League game or your pastor’s service on the TV. That’s where the TV just transforms into an amazing device when you allow family caregivers to remotely take care, and it helps reduce social isolation, goodness, all of this.

Kim Barnes
It’s amazing because it is kind of this whole communication device all in one. I hadn’t even thought about the fact that with people’s Smart TVs you can access the internet or other apps that allow you to have the live stream of the baseball game or something like that, which really does help open their world in some ways, especially when you live in different cities than your parent. I think that there are so many of us who are in that situation.

Ashish Aggarwal
Yeah, so the second layer of this is communication. The first one is TV content, but then we started to see that TV is the largest surface. People with hearing impairment can now see big faces. In very initial days, a grandfather, a child wrote, saying, “My father just absolutely lights up when he sees the grandkids’ face on the big screen.” A mother told her daughter, “I don’t feel lonely anymore when you go visit me on the big screen.” It is life-size. So we added the second layer, which is communication. We see transformational, game-changing results, like repeatedly throughout—like 250 comments now. So video calling, photos, reminders—it’s a big, powerful thing. So a medication reminder: the TV turns on, reminds your parents that there is medication to be taken, and it cannot be easily missed. You have to dismiss it. It notifies the family that your mom has acknowledged the reminder. To be able to make TV a communication surface was the second pillar, and that’s been really amazing too.

Mike Barnes
I think that communication is huge because—not to tell family secrets—but Kim’s mom forgets things to do all the time, and Kim’s like, “Oh, I need to remind her somehow. I keep telling her to write a Post-it note, and she doesn’t read the Post-it note.” 

Kim Barnes
The Post-it note’s only good if you look at it, right? If it’s on your big TV, it’s harder to miss, that’s for sure. So I can see one physical therapy reminder—I’m visualizing that for just those reminders, because I mean, I also feel like that does help in some ways. Even though you’re helping to control their TV, it also potentially helps a little bit with their independence because you’re not having to maybe nag them all the time by calling them or calling them over and over—“Don’t forget!”—or me sometimes forgetting because I’ve gotten busy, I’m in a meeting and I forgot to call her, and then she misses it. Then I get frustrated with her, I get frustrated with me, and so being able to do it where it’s a little more passive, if you will, might help them feel more independent too.

Ashish Aggarwal
Yeah, I think you nail a very important point. Social isolation, but also independence is a key pillar. I’ll give you one example of our board member—he’s put it for his mom. What was surprising to me is what he said: his mom now feels more secure knowing that her son is keeping a watchful eye on her without being intrusive. That is the brilliance of, you know, you want to be there but you don’t want to be in their face all the time. Everybody needs their space. So this device allows you to keep a really watchful eye. It allows you to communicate. The camera, the microphone, and the edge AI allow you to get notifications when things may be out of the ordinary—TV didn’t turn on, or Mom didn’t enter the room by 10:00, or Mom didn’t leave the room, or was sitting for many hours. All of these can give a notification back to the family care provider, and Mom knows that, so she’s more at ease and independent.

What you mentioned about therapy reminders or medication reminders, along with this Wellness monitoring, all that allows seniors to age with dignity and independence and allows them to stay connected with their family. 

Mike Barnes In so many way It is two-way communication because we can send reminders, but we get those notifications on our phone that give us peace of mind. I kind of compare it to having kids because I know when our kids were teenagers, we were worried about them. We wanted to give them their independence, but we also wanted to know where they were and what they were doing. Now it’s the same thing with our parents, and this allows us to do that. 

Kim Barnes
I mean, even today you were a little worried because you hadn’t talked to your dad in a few hours.

Mike Barnes
I could have easily checked on him this way.

Kim Barnes
Tell us a little bit more about the Wellness monitoring.

Ashish Aggarwal
Yeah, so what we do is we combine three very powerful sensors. One is the camera, one is the microphone, and the third one we call the TV watching, because the TV watching is a habit. Using these three, we can combine and make a very powerful scenario wherein it can notify you, and you can set those reminders and your own preferences. The system can tell you when something is out of the ordinary, right? Because Mom turns on the TV every day at 10:00, so let’s say by 11:00 if she doesn’t turn it on, then the system knows that and tells you, “Hey look, you may want to check on Mom.” Or she didn’t turn off the TV at night—what’s going on, right?

If there is a second person in the room when they’re not supposed to be, or if there’s a second person not there when they’re supposed to be—like a care provider coming in—imagine all those scenarios. You can say, “I just want to get notification on these. Just tell me if something is abnormal or just give me a notification every minute or every hour that everything is normal.” You can set and dial that, and it is a huge value. Eighty-eight percent of our population sets notifications and then acts on it, right, like “Hey, everything has been normal for a day,” or abnormal.

We have one scenario specifically that comes to mind: the system kind of told them that the care provider is supposed to be at the door, and nobody’s opening the door for Dad. The son lives four hours away, and they said, “Look, in that scenario it would have absolutely been jump on a flight, or drive, or go, or call 911. There was no option.” But they were able to turn on the TV, ring the TV and the speaker. That woke up Dad, who had slept on the side, and then everything was okay. So they saved an ER trip or a 911 call. The ability to do Wellness monitoring remotely through these three sensors is a very powerful feature.

Kim Barnes
So when I want to call my mom, does she have to choose to answer? Does it automatically connect? How does that work? Can she call out, or is it me just calling her?

Ashish Aggarwal
So both ways work. She can call you, you can call her. Both ways work. When you call her, you have two options, depending on what permissions your mom has given you. If your mom has allowed you to call her without her needing to respond—like pick up the remote control and say “Yes”—then you can call directly. Even then, the way it works is it turns on the TV, starts ringing and saying, “Hey, you have a call.” It doesn’t turn on the camera.. Then you get a 15-second countdown where Mom can deny, in case she’s not ready to take your call. Privacy is critical. But after that, the call connects, and you are right there in the room with her.

So you have both modes. You can start a call saying, “Okay, I want Mom to acknowledge; otherwise I’m not going to speak into her room,” or you can have an auto-connect. Most people do an auto-connect call. The call starts ringing, and then if Mom doesn’t respond within 15 seconds, the call automatically connects.

Kim Barnes
Gotcha, gotcha. So really it is like doing a FaceTime call, but it’s on the TV so it’s nice and big, probably easier to hear and all of that.

Mike Barnes
And easier for her to see.

Ashish Aggarwal
Right, exactly. But look at it from your side because when you’re doing a FaceTime call with your mom, you only see her small face. Here the camera is wide angle, and you can see the whole room.

Kim Barnes
I’m thinking of my father-in-law. When we FaceTime with him, we only see this much of him, so we don’t even see his whole face. I barely see his nose. 

Ashish Aggarwal
Sometimes the nose hair is way too much, right? 

Kim Barnes
With this one, Mom can stand up, and you can see all of her if you needed to check, like, “Hey, are your ankles swollen?” or whatever it is. You’re not having to try to get them to position the phone in a way to help you see them. You really can get a good view of how they look today and get a better sense of how they’re doing.

Ashish Aggarwal
Now you can see the room. Seeing the room is also important. Is it messy? Is it clean? Are they happy? Are they sad? A lot of indicators just by looking at the whole space.

Kim Barnes
Yeah, so I think that the obvious part is, “Oh my gosh, if I can only just control my mom’s television, that would solve so many issues.” But there are so many other layers, so many other layers that add to that.

Ashish Aggarwal
Yeah, exactly. We kind of say, look, TV is the largest screen, the most accessible, and the unimodal use. The phone and the apps on the TV are too confusing even for us. You actually want a very simple interactive device with a remote control that we call a 10-foot interface. Converting that now into an iPhone kind of behavior where you can not just control content, but you can start to layer on video calling and communication, then you can start to layer on sensors and Wellness monitoring. That is where our path is, right? So we made TV into an extremely powerful surface that solves social isolation, gives them independence, and for the family, saves time, saves a lot of money, and gives them peace of mind.

Mike Barnes
Yeah, peace of mind is the key. Thank you so much for using this technology to help so many people. I think what we’re learning here again is technology is there; there are things out there that can help us, and we need the help. We have to admit that it’s not anything that you have to shy away from. I know you need it. Yes, I know firsthand. Yes, yes, yes, I do. If you have any other topics you’d like us to discuss, please let us know at Parenting Aging Parents.

*This transcript is auto-generated. Please excuse any typos or mistakes.