Keita Watanabe, Ph.D., and Shota Matsuda of Japan’s Keio University have won a couple of awards for their crazy, yet somehow logical concept for a microwave. Called the Castoven, it eschews the transparent glass panel typically seen on microwave ovens in place of a 10.4-inch LCD display. When the oven’s timer is set, a connected computer searches for a YouTube video of equivalent length, so you can watch instead of wait. Sounds awesome right?

As a joke, probably. But, with all due respect to the designers, as a real product this could use a lot of refining. First of all, if you have no control over which YouTube video is going to be played then half the time you’ll be watching something that you won’t find entertaining. Worse, it may end up displaying naughty or nasty clips. You may consider it a pleasant surprise to when you find yourself confronted by a healthy serving of boobies while waiting for your Pop Tarts, but would you want your kids to see that? Would you want your kids to see you enjoying that?

But most of all, I just don’t want appliances to become needlessly expensive because of unnecessary add-ons like this. We might as well integrate a microwave oven into HDTVs. Hell, that would be a better gadget.

Check out Watanabe and Matsuda’s website for more details on the Castoven. Would you buy one?

[via CrunchGear]

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categories: design  future tech  hacks + mods  interactive  just plain fun  media players  strange + wonderful  technology  video

tags: concept display funny japan kitchen microwave oven weird youtube

December 10th, 2009 comments [1] stumble it! digg it! by: lambert v.

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