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WSJ Reviews High End Universal Remotes
An anonymous reader writes "Walt Mossberg is at it again - this time comparing the Philips Pronto and the Harmony SST-768. These remotes have both been featured on Slashdot before."
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Anyone willing to spend that amount of money on a remote should just go get a PPC or Palm and get a program like omniremote and they can program it to do their bidding just the same as the high end universal's
i can appreciate the ability to have complex macros. but @ the same time. you really miss the ability to operate the remote by touch only [ i am sure that everyone can do this with their current remote already] even though the touch screen remotes are all backlit and can be operated in the dark they are far less natural and subesequently take more time. IMHO
If you're that lazy that it's cost effective to purchase such a remote, you really need to get outside. You can buy a pair of nice rollerbaldes or a small home gym for the price of that remote.
Does anyone find it interesting that Philips' allegedly smart remote has South Park on the Weather Channel and The Man Show on CSPAN?
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Remote control of television/home theater setups would seem to be an area where one might profitably use voice recognition for control. Voice recognition works best when it uses a limited set of words; I suggest that a voice-recognition system for controlling a home theater system could be abstracted to a suitably limited set of commands.
:-)
The actions required to control a home theater can be broken down into these categories: 1) selecting the source, 2) controlling playback, and 3) channel tuning and volume control. Thus, you'd have this command for selecting the source:
SELECT {TV|DVD|VHS|SATELLITE|CABLE|RADIO|CD|TAPE}
Which is fairly self-evident -- say select and then the name of the device you want to use. For playback:
PLAY
PAUSE
STOP
REWIND
FAST FORWARD
Those should be clear. Then for the last bit, you'd need:
VOLUME {UP|DOWN|NUMBER}
MUTE
These last need commentary. Volume UP/DOWN will adjust the volume one notch up or down. NUMBER is a number between zero and ten, setting the volume at 0%, 10%, 20%, etc, zero being muted. MUTE is a toggle: when you say it, mutes the audio or returns it to the previous volume level, based on the current state of the volume. You could theoretically divide that into two commands MUTE and UNMUTE, but there's no real reason to do so. Then, for tuning control:
CHANNEL {UP|DOWN|NUMBER}
SURF {UP|DOWN|END}
Channel UP/DOWN bumps it up or down one channel. NUMBER requires you to say the number of the channel, eg "CHANNEL three four" will switch the channel 34. It would be nice to add support for proper numerical recognition, eg thirty four instead of three-four, though that would obviously increase the number of number-phrases for the software to recognize by quite a few.
The SURF command will switch up or down one channel every five seconds till you say "SURF END". This is to avoid having to say "CHANNEL UP" over and over and over.
Controls of the tint, brightness, and so on of the monitor are best left to actual buttons on the TV. (Or perhaps a jog-dial + OSD, like on some computer monitors). Similarly I'd use a physical on/off button rather than POWER ON|OFF.
That's a fairly limited vocabulary, meaning it could probably be implemented comparatively easily. It has some distinct advantages: no remotes to get lost, no batteries to replace, doesn't require line-of-sight to the equipment, can be operated by blind people without difficulty (yes, many of them like to listen to the TV even if they can't see it), and best of all it's an intuitive interface: we give verbal instructions all the time, and even people with zero technical knowledge can figure out how to SELECT DVD and PLAY. (Whereas my mother still cannot figure out how to play DVDs on our current four-remote system; selecting the DVD player as the source of the video seems to be beyond her, so she always gets my brother to do it.)
On the other hand, it has some disadvantages. Mute people would be totally unable to use it. Different software would be required for different languages, and possibly for different dialects depending on how great the linguistic variation between the standard version and the dialect was. Lastly, you wouldn't be able to operate it quietly (if, for example, it was late at night and you didn't want to disturb anybody who was sleeping). Probably there are also some technical challenges of which I am unaware, too.
Still . . . it'd be really neat.