>Speaking of the XBox.One... Apparently the Kinect system (camera and motion sensor) isn't always on -- you turn it on by standing in front of the console and wave your hand. So... if it is not on, how does it know if you're standing in front and waving your hand so that it can turn on?

I asked myself the same question. So what I did was, I opened the box to see how that exactly works. To my surprise I found a small mouse sitting in the device, and there is a small window through which the mouse can see what is happening in front of the device. The window is disguised on the outside so you cannot see the mouse from the outside, but the mouse can see you. At the side where the mouse sits is a switch, which is usually turned off, but when you do your waving thing, the mouse stands up from it's chair (it's sitting most of the time because the mouse would not be able to stand for such long periods of time without getting tired), and switches the device on. Then it sits down again and starts reading a newspaper. Now and then the mouse looks up from its newspaper, glancing just to see if you're still hopping around. When the mouse does not see any activity anymore for a while, it gets up again and switches the switch to position "off". I can't say exactly if the mouse is also reading the newspaper while the device is off, but probably not because it is on power save mode and there is not enough light. Also I don't know why the mouse is reading always the same newspaper. It gets updated with each new release of Xbox.