More Samsung shame...

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/05/samsungs-rmc30d-universal-touch-control-tv-remote-touts-three-i/

I bet they're proud.

I guess we'll know for sure if Samsung really stole the design, when we start getting reports that the remote only works if you're holding it the right way.

Ba dum tish!

I'm surprised they didn't give it one of their "Keeping it Real Fake" labels. Perhaps because it's not a phone, otherwise it would be a definite "KIRF," as they call things like these.

I really want hard buttons on a TV remote.

Everyone does. But not everyone knows it.

Hard buttons arranged to be selected by touch!

One of the best remotes I had, was for a 9" bedside television was kind of ugly. The buttons were on a rectangular array, but with enough gaps and missing buttons that I just knew by touch were it was my thumb had landed.

It was super easy to operate without looking at it.

My vote goes to the TiVo peanut remote.

Ditto. Our Tivo died last year, but we still use it's remote for on/off, volume and switching inputs over the TV's remote or the also compatible DVD remote which are both Sonys.

Clearly, I'm in full agreement (and now, specifically, the Slide).

My first big-time universal remote was the Philips Pronto TSU1000. It had only 7 hard buttons (channel and volume up/down, mute, and two additional buttons). That just wasn't enough for me, so I upgraded to the TSU3500, which has the channel and volume sets and mute, but instead of the two additional buttons has a d-pad surrounded by four buttons, effectively adding six buttons to the face. That has been a big difference, although I still tend to use the Pronto primarily to turn things on/off and switch inputs.

Tivo peanut FTW!

Our first remote was huge (bigger than the Harmony 8xx that I have). It had three buttons, volume down (all the way down to turn off), volume up (turns on the tv also), and channel (only advanced the channels up). It was impossible to not know what button you were getting ready to hit and could double as a home defense weapon (weighed a ton).

This is probably a good place to ask a question that's been bugging me for a while, which is: why do there seem to be so few players (and so few options) in the universal remote market?

I know a lot of people will use whatever universal came with their cable box, or are fine swapping between their multiple remotes and don't even consider the idea that they might want a universal. But, looking at the stuff coming out of CES every year, I see a whole lot of devices people want to sell me, but very few options for controlling them. The Logitech Harmony series has, what, three current models? Four? Then there are some offerings from URC, some lower-end models from One-for-All, then... what? In the medium-to-high end, there isn't nearly the variety I would expect.

I can't imagine even the highest-end remotes cost more than a few bucks to produce, yet some of them sell for hundreds of dollars. Surely there's some cost to develop the hardware and firmware, and test out the remotes with various devices, but I find it odd that there isn't more variety, and therefore more competition on price and features. Anyone have any insight into this?

There are a lot of players in that mid section as well as the high end section. Just that most of them don't have the distribution that would enable you to know about them as readily.

Take a look at Remote Central sometime for some of the more obscure brands.

Cost of developing a remote can't be measured only by the bill of materials. There's a ton of research and development and in some cases licensing costs that go into producing such a product. In the case of Harmony there are also ongoing costs for the servers that power their back end, which by now, I'm sure are pretty robust, even if their software stinks.

BTW, Logitech bought Harmony for about $21 million USD back in 2004. On the expectation that they would grow the business to over $50 Million per year. They have the distribution to make that happen and as history shows us, they came in and dominated the universal market. This past year Philips pulled their Pronto line out of the market so that's one less player.

My current remote, URC's MX-980 carries a list price over $600. I would venture to guess its BOM is probably under $50. But it also ships with software which has to be developed and maintained. It's also a dealer-centric product so it naturally carries a higher price than a consumer-oriented affair.

I worked on this "problem" for a couple of years so I have all kinds of insight and IP tied up around it. I still think there's a play to be made, but I'll have to see how a number of other things pan out in my life.

After reading the coverage of the Samsung CES keynote, I'm even more confused by this device. They showed a guy using the touchscreen to scroll through his twitter feed on the TV screen. The commenter had the question "Why not just read twitter on the device your holding, instead of shrinking your TV viewing experience to fit it up there?"

I could see it being useful in a similar way that the Remote app is on an iPhone, used for selecting music playing through the AirPlay speakers and other similar use cases. Just seems odd to get rid of all physical buttons though for a TV remote, including the basic volume up and down buttons.

Oh, and "Zoll's back!"

Holy cow! How did I miss that one? Damn, that makes me sad. They made really nice remotes. Unfortunately I could only aspire to own the fancier models, and only picked up used ebay cast-offs, but I like them a lot!

Thanks for bumming me out, Bruno!

Apple should just put some kind of IR learning/transmit ability into the next iPod touch and iPad and market it as an AV remote along with the existing abilities. It wouldn't have the physical buttons though which would be a downside.

I wonder if anybody has made a thin jacket or iPhone 4 style bumper with buttons and IR for the iPod touch. I know you can get docks which you pair with the iOS device which handles the IR transmission itself but having it as part of the remote would be nice.

[edit]IR case exists but no buttons[/edit]

There are sites selling a simple/tiny plug-in gizmo that allows the iWhatevers to become universal remotes. The one I saw looked like a simple headphone plug with an IR LED grafted to the end of it. Probably completely passive, just driven by the iWhatever's serial port or audio-out or something.

Cheers

There are a number of products that let the idevices do remote control duties. I hope to have something this year as well, but I'm currently working toward some other ideas first. Even though the idevice-capable idea is the oldest of the things I'm working on (dates back to 2004).

Some of the new tech in BT and WiFi finalizing this year are really exciting for such hardware design.

Yeah. I've used some of those IR dongles which connected to the headphone socket on old PDAs. I was just wondering if somebody managed to add some hard buttons to an iOS device.

I joked to a friend when the app store opened that we should make a handset that the iPhone or iPod could slide into. At the time there was no support for dock-connector peripherals so we would have had to incorporate firmware specific to hard buttons while the iPhone's screen would be the soft buttons. Now with the dock connector opened up or simply using bluetooth, one can make something a lot more integrated. It would be one hell of a large screen on a handset/wand type remote though.

The surprising thing isn't that these things are becoming rarer, it's that they ever existed. It's an unbelievable aberration that everyone involved can justly be deeply embarrassed about, and it's inevitable that they will all disappear as the consumer AV market matures, and by "matures" I mean "gets past the stage where Harmony and Pronto have to change their nappies for them".

HDMI CEC is nail #1 in their coffin, but even CEC is a bit half-assed (13 ASCII characters of OSD? So desu ne, tovarisch?) and it has been for a long time not rocket science to do it properly (UPnP, for example).

Peter

I don't see the market for universal remotes going anywhere but up in the next 5 years.

It's been growing for the past 10 years and for the past 5 has really rocketed. The reason you may think you see less products is because Harmony has taken a huge percentage of the market.

I don't see CEC changing the way most people have their equipment controlled over the next 5 years. While devices are proliferating, the implementation just doesn't have enough traction yet to even register as a blip on the consumer landscape.

There's also always (foreseeable future, up to 10 years for this comment) going to be a market for an aftermarket or premium remote handset. Both in the retail and custom install channels. It's simply not practical to have HDMI linking absolutely everything together. Especially for esoteric things like lighting.

The only thing that constantly bugs me about home theater devices and remotes is the lack of discrete codes. It really doesn't make any sense to me that companies don't supply their customers with something so simple yet so important. The ability to know, absolutely, that you're sending a command to turn your device on or off is such a big deal, and the only way that I have full confidence that anyone other than me can operate my home theater.

All it takes is simply putting two power buttons on a device's remote instead of one. These companies should know that the remote is probably going to go into a drawer anyway, and even if it doesn't, what's one more button on some of these already cluttered remotes?

The reason this issue gets to me so much is that if the industry were more supportive of discrete codes, there would be absolutely no need for any of these fancy universal remotes. I have done universal remote programming for several clients now, and when I leave they have a remote that lets them turn their system on and to any input with a single button (for each input, of course), and a single button to turn the system off. If the original remotes had discrete buttons for everything I needed, the process would be far simpler. Instead, I have to use my older Pronto in an elaborate series of programming, sometimes needed to get/convert hex codes for certain devices.

Thankfully, it seems that we're getting there. My new receiver has discrete buttons on the included remote for all the basics, and I was able to reprogram my Pronto without even needing my computer.

IMO, as long as discrete codes exist that's all that's needed. It's not necessary to clutter a pack-in remote with buttons for those codes. Most people who set up a universal remote aren't learning codes from an original remote.

IMO, every device should have both toggle and discrete codes. I dislike it when a toggle is missing. Lucky for me, with URC's software I can actually make my own toggle commands.

The big issue is that a lot of manufacturers don't include discrete code support in the product at all, forget about their remote. That's a nice indicator of why I don't think CEC is going to be the silver bullet. Most manufacturers just don't try hard enough to integrate their own solutions, let alone play nice with products from other companies.

Eww. No. If you want discrete codes then just make the device support it and the end user works it out from the IR data or document it somewhere. The proper way to do it is via correctly made data strings you enter and not a learnt IR code as learnt codes generally won't do the repeating and length of code properly.

Having extra buttons is just a kludge which will affect everybody who doesn't have a universal remote which is actually quite a lot of people. Maybe make the long press code do it or something like that.

To be fair, quality remotes don't just learn a raw signal. They take in the raw signal and then decode it to identify the protocol, device and command details so then it can be recreated programmatically, with the correct parameters, including repeat pattern and length.

But yeah, cheap remotes just learn a sequence, which is definitely not the same thing. This usually works fine for most buttons as they won't need to repeat.

Sorry, but your solutions sound a lot more kludgey than my suggestion of adding a single freaking button. Does this remote really look more cluttered than every other receiver remote out there?

Sorry, but no manufacturer is going to do the things you suggested, so they might as well give me the button.


I would agree with you if it weren't next to impossible to get the codes even when they do exist.

Example: most of Sony's devices have discrete codes. I think that's great, but it took me a great deal of research to figure out how to find them, then a while to figure out how to use them. The process ended up being something that only a total remote control nerd like me would be able to figure out. If you simply add a "power off" button to a device's remote, I think anyone with a little patience and a remote control manual in front of them could figure it out.

The thing I left out of my diatribe was the cost: the remote I leave with my clients costs $25. That's compared to over $100 for a Harmony, or FAR more for most of these remotes. I'm certain that one of my clients could program this remote if all their devices' remotes had at least discrete power buttons on them, and if the receiver has discrete input buttons (which is at least a little more common).

I find it funny when you say that you don't like how cluttered the remote might look with an extra button. To me, the lack of that button means you're less likely to use a universal remote at all, which means you're likely to have remotes for all your devices on your coffee table. That seems far more cluttered to me, and adds dozens of extra buttons

Manufacturers already do what I suggested. Discrete codes exist for devices which don't have a discrete on and off button on the remote. Having an extra button is a kludge.


I thought you just said that no manufacturer is going to do what I suggested?

If you're using a universal remote and have special profiles designed then I'd class you as an advanced user or have an advanced integrator that did it for you.

Sorry, but you're misunderstanding me. I meant they won't provide you with this information. Do you know of any major company that does?

Here's the site I had to go to for my Sony hex codes. The number of people who go to the trouble of actually using that information is extremely small. I believe that the number of people who I describe above is significantly larger. You didn't address any of that...

Significantly larger than people who just use the regular remote by itself? Um okay

Sony do provide Pronto codes for at least one of their displays.

Most manufacturers provide their IR codes in a document or in a format usable by a remote such as a Pronto. Most will, upon request, provide discrete codes if they exist. You just have to write to them and ask.

The reason I said it was a bad move wasn't because I was specifically talking about the ON/OFF scenario. That's very basic, but there are tons of other possible discrete commands which don't belong on the standard remote. Can you imagine every possible discrete input on a small remote? Some remotes do offer this functionality, but it's one of the reasons people replace stock remotes - button overload.

That site you linked to is an old favorite of mine. You can also get remote codes quite easily for almost anything via Remote Central. But yes, you have to be somewhat of a techy to even consider it. At the same time, a universal remote is somewhat geeky and until the Harmony line, every consumer-level universal was pretty much device oriented with little to no automation. Maybe a couple of marco keys and the ability to punch-through volume and power buttons.

However, the issue isn't that these buttons aren't on OEM remotes. It's all about the remote you're trying to set your customer up with. If the codes aren't already part of the database of that $25 remote then you really need to blame the maker of that remote. It's techy types and geeks that create remotes, so you know they have access to that info. It's why the Harmony, URC and Pronto databases include a TON of discrete commands. Harmony uses them by default if they exist for your device (forget for a moment that their DB is extremely dirty right now )

For most people, on an OEM remote, it's easier to have a single button for ON/OFF. It matches the toggle button usually found on the device itself. One extra button means losing the toggle. That's OK for some remotes. But you can't very well put discrete commands for all discrete functions on an OEM remote, even though they're amazingly useful when putting together an automation solution, including setting up an activity on a universal remote.

My apologies, but I still don't understand (or think I've even heard) your counterargument. Because again, when you say things like this, it makes me think that your proposal is that it's better to have 4 remote controls on a coffee table without a few extra buttons on them than it is to add a few buttons on there with the possibility that more homes will have a single remote on their table.

I suppose I was overstating, and should have said that it would open the possibility that more average consumers could sufficiently program their inexpensive universal remotes. You're probably right that most of those additional people still wouldn't take advantage of it. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't give them the option. There's plenty that these sets are capable of that 95% of users will never use (most never even change the picture settings on their HDTVs), but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be given the option...


Yeah, I came across that when I was trying to find my link. That's a single, minor line of sets from four to five years ago.


I've not seen this myself. Don't get me wrong, I'd like that. I've certainly never seen IR codes included in documentation. Do you have an example of that?


My apologies, I definitely didn't make this clear enough in my early arguments. I don't think there should be a button for every possible discrete code that could be sent to a device. You'd end up with a receiver that had 100 buttons on it. But I remain unconvinced why there shouldn't be discrete on/off. This seems essential to me. So much so that it's one of the top three criteria I set when looking for a new receiver. It was important enough that I wouldn't get one that didn't have it.

Aside from on/off, the only discretes I need to create a decent macro are inputs, and possibly something that will set the receiver's audio to some sort of auto-decode mode.


I tend to think this is a very small number of people. I think if they're going to the trouble of replacing a remote, they're doing it to get a remote that replaces several remotes. That is, unless they're getting one of those Fischer Price-looking things with 15 buttons on it. Otherwise, I haven't seen a programmable remote in the store with fewer buttons than you'd find on most included remote controls. I think the main problem with most receiver-bundled remote controls is simply the poor design of the button layouts. I've seen very few of those remotes that were actually usable...


As much as I love Remote Central, I simply haven't found this to be the case. "Many devices," sure, but I can't tell you how often I run into brick walls trying to find just discrete on/off for a device for a client.

The most common is cable boxes. Frankly, I'm not sure why some of these even need to turn off, but they do, and there's no discrete codes for any of the ones in my area. There are tricks to deal with devices like this, but they're not great or foolproof, and add time to macros.



This is true. Even still, the cheap universals (like this one) aren't fantastic at automation, but typically let you assign a healthy number of macros. But they're perfectly fine for my clients, who couldn't program them without my help and my equipment (at least in the current state of discrete codes ).


What? This doesn't make sense to me. Why would I blame them? Like I said, those codes are hard to get, and the high-end remotes don't have them either. Why else would people put the ones that are available on Remote Central? Sorry, but this is crazy talk...


Again, I simply have not seen this. First, where is this "Pronto database?" I haven't seen one. And I suppose things might have changed since I owned my Harmony remote, but when I had it it didn't find one single discrete code for any of my devices. How would you know if it did, anyway? Isn't the point of the Harmony that you don't think about those things?



You may be right, but I think people can wrap their minds around it. I think there's a great many dense people out there, but I do think they can tell the difference between "on" and "off"

Okay. Having to add extra buttons just to satisfy people who want discrete codes to program into their universal remote via IR learning is not worthwhile when people already dislike massive remotes covered in buttons and you can get discrete codes via third party sites or from the manufacturer in several cases. As Bruno pointed out, there will be many discrete codes necessary also.


Okay. How about Samsung DLP TVs from 2002 to 2009 which have discrete codes provided as a PDF on the website. Or Panasonic Plasma TVs from 2003 to 2007 which comes in Pronto format. Various LG LCD TVs from around 2009. These are all codes direct from the manufacturer. There will be other third party sites such as remotecentral which will have more.


See above.


Thats still 2 for the power, say 5 for your inputs and some number for your audio inputs. 5 extra buttons just for power and inputs alone on your remote since you'd have a minimum of two anyway to handle those features.

First I'd just like to say that there's a huge catch-22 in this whole train of thought. Cheap universal remotes are not meant to be programmed with codes supplied by the manufacturer of the devices you want to control. They're meat to be "set up" with lookup codes that point to a specific code set from their built-in generic database. It's possible to do more with these remotes, but that's not what they're designed nor marketed for. The concept of doing more with these remotes is a fan/user driven one and is relatively small. That's the main reason there's been no traction in supplying codes in such a format that would be readily usable by such remotes. And why, in the past it was harder to com by IR data from manufacturers of the devices.





Denon, Yamaha, Lexicon, DVDO, Philips, and more. I have a lot of documents here with IR codes that have been provided by the manufacturers. Stand-alone documents, addendum and some included as an appendix in a product manual.

Here's the thing though. I spent over 2 years living and breathing remote controls. I've forgotten more about IR and remote controls than most people into remote controls will ever know, never mind your average joe. Seriously.



I'd be happy so long as the device has the codes, regardless of whether they're on the remote. It so happens that my pre-pro doesn't have a dedicated "ON" button on the remote. What you do is click the individual source buttons and that will turn it on to that source. Then there's an OFF button which turns it off. There's also a simple ON command, but that's not on the remote.



See you do get that these things are about device design. It's not necessary for them to be on the OEM remote because that remote isn't the one being set up for automation. Most average people aren't going to do the IR learning dance. BTW, some manufacturers also have dedicated teaching remotes that are basically a huge grid of buttons with all the commands on them, specifically to teach other remote. Crazy eh?




Remote Central remains the authority on remote codes, though in the past years some people have left the community and, I'm sad to say it, some have passed away. But if you're looking for a discrete and you don't want to contact the manufacturer, or they're unresponsive, you should post in the RC forum if it's not something already part of their file area.



Yeah, I agree, they suck.




Because the makers of those remotes are responsible for what's on them. Actually, it's the makers of the database chip they use, and unfortunately many of them simply license the same chip. There are very few providers of IR databases out there. Anyway, these guys can get them the same as you and me, from the manufacturers. It's a LOT of bloody work though and it's why many are lacking. And why at one point I had a better IR database than anyone in the business other than Logitech/Harmony.



DIdn't you say you have a Pronto? There's a database of codes built into the software. It includes some discretes the last I recall. URC's software includes discrete commands in as many of their data sets as they can and they also have discrete-only sets that they update as they can.

[/quote] And I suppose things might have changed since I owned my Harmony remote, but when I had it it didn't find one single discrete code for any of my devices. How would you know if it did, anyway? Isn't the point of the Harmony that you don't think about those things?[/quote]

Most consumers aren't supposed to think about those things. But if you read what I wrote at the top you'd know that didn't apply to me. I am pretty familiar how the Harmony software and remote work inside and out. Not as familiar as I wanted to be, but I knew as much as one could know without sitting over the shoulder of their developers reading the source code. That said, what I mentioned about discretes is in fact more general a fact than that. If you have ever added a device from scratch or reconfigured the power and input commands, or just taken a look at the complete list of commands for one device, you'd see that their software tracks POWER ON and POWER OFF in addition to toggles and when available and so-configured, the discretes will be what's used to power on and off a device. The toggle is the last resort.

What's unfortunate is that with such a large community and lax controls over the DB, there is a ton of duplication in the DB and a lot (a LOT) of mess/crap. Some of the duplicated devices don't include the discretes, some include completely bogus commands, etc.

Anyway, I don't think we'll see any changes in this regard. TV remotes won't come standard with ON and OFF buttons any time soon. SOme will, but they will by far be the exceptions.