Tarsier's technology lets users reach out and manipulate icons, windows or images on a screen as if they're floating in the air, according to co-founder Shafa Wala. The company is looking toward TVs as a natural place to implement MoveEye, because users normally look at TVs from several feet away. The company will demonstrate some of the MoveEye technology at the Demo Fall conference this week in Santa Clara, California.

Despite years of promises of interactive TV, the systems that have hit the market, such as Google TV and Microsoft's earlier WebTV, have never gained much traction.

"Today, we don't really have a way to interact with our TVs from a distance," Wala said. "The remote control, the mouse, and the keyboard are really not the ideal input devices for interacting with TVs."

In place of those familiar PC tools, MoveEye uses a special pair of glasses, a "media box" to run the interface, and software. The glasses have a built-in stereoscopic pair of cameras pointed at the screen, sensors to detect the viewer's eye movements, and Wi-Fi to talk to the media box. Together, these give the illusion of viewing and touching the interface in thin air.

"You just point at what you want to interact with, or you just grab something that's projecting out of the screen," Wala said.