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."

Comments

Just use the palm piolet

[electro_mike]

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

jp1 programming rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need a high end universal remote unless you are obsessed with touchscreen remotes.

Check out www.hifi-remote.com and the jp1 programming group on groups.yahoo.com for info on how to totally program radio shack and OneforAll remotes. Macros on devices buttons, new devices,... you name it.

Re:jp1 programming rocks

[crow]

Absolutely!

I bought a $29.95 remote at Radio shack, along with a DB25 connector, cut apart an old IDE cable and soldered it to the DB25, and now I can program every button to do exactly what I want it to. (I think that there are people who will sell pre-made cables for a reasonable fee if you ask nicely.) Like most universal remotes, it comes pre-programmed with device code for most common brands, but you can't program every key to do exactly what you want it to in each of the modes; that is, until you hook up the JP1 cable.

Now when I copy shows from my ReplayTV to VHS (usually for a friend), the Replay Quick Skip button is active in VCR mode, so I can pause the VCR, skip the commercials, and unpause, all without changing modes on the remote.

Oh, and I can download the settings from the remote and archive them in case it ever breaks.

HP-48SX/GX

[Webmoth]

As I recall, there used to be software available for the HP-48SX/GX calculators that allowed it to function as an IR remote control for your *whatever*.

My desire to get this post in early does not allow me time to do a Google search, but I'm sure someone will.

Now here's a remote

[WankersRevenge]

These remotes might be "all that", but nothing beats this one in terms of features and ease of use.

anyone else having problems connecting to Slashdot today?

Unfair comparison.

[juuri]

These remotes are targetted at different crowds. I used to use a pronto (until it broke from one too many falls and required $150 fee to fix). The pronto makes no excuses about being created for the high end tech/theater crowd. The remote is complex, can be tedious to setup but has some awesome high end features.

Pronto's strength is in its ability to create complex macros. For example at my old apartment which had X-10 I had rwo of the following one button macros configured:

[DVD] - Switched to TV to component input. Switched received to DVD audio. Switched TVs aspect ratio. Powered up and issued a play command to the DVD. Dimmed the lights to 50% through the pc-x10 receiver.
[SLEEP] - Switched tv off. Changed cable to classical radio. Turned off lights. Turned volume on received all the way down the up two notches. Slept for 60 minutes, turned receiver off.

Now, that, is an awesome remote.

Features I would like to see

[dmuth]

I would like to see a remote control that can turn down the volume of, pause, and ESPECIALLY rewind my boss. :-)

It's a sad day when...

[rickthewizkid]

My remote control costs almost as much as my TV set.

Of course, I don't watch that much TV, so it may seem like a waste of money to me...

Just my 13-inches-worth...
RickTheWizKid

evil bit rfc?

[pcardoso]

"These remotes have both been featured on Slashdot before."

But then, /. features a lot of stuff, several times, just in case someone misses it for the first time.

I mean, like that evil bit RFC? :)

proud pronto owner

[coaxial]

I own the first generation pronto (the midnight sea foam green one, not the new silver one with the color display). It is without a doubt my favorite piece of home electronics. It solves my problem of 5 different remotes beautifully. I put it into DVD mode and press a button marked "on" and my television turns on and selects svideo input, the dvd player turns on, the receiver turns on, and selects dvd mode. One button does it all. It truly is a sight to behold.

It came with a real screen editor. I can draw buttons, assign single functions or macros to buttons, use timers. I was afraid that the editor wouldn't be up to par, but it was exactly what I wanted.

Now there's alot of people saying "use a palmpilot" but they don't know what they're talking about. The palmpilot and the like's IR transmitter simply isn't powerful enough to work as remote control. Think about it. If it says it can send files from up to a meter away, what makes you think that it's going to be able to control your television at 4 meters?

Only works from 3 feet away.

[bburdette]

Last time I tried this was with a palm III. It only worked when I was close enough to push the TV buttons myself. Kind of defeats the purpose! I think there are some palm models that have greater range, but most don't.

Re:Only works from 3 feet away.

[Dr. Manhattan]

Well, there's a way to hack the Palm hardware to at least triple the range, but of course it draws more battery power. Still, Palm III's and even Palm V's are dirt cheap these days; much cheaper than a high-end remote.

Re:Only works from 3 feet away.

[drinkypoo]

Pacific Neotek, maker(s) of the OmniRemote software, also sell two pieces of hardware designed to enhance the palm's IR. There is a serial dongle (for palms with the old connector) and there is a handspring module. The handspring module features 450kHz IR (for controlling new and expensive devices such as those from Bang & Olafsen) and X10 radio control. Both of these devices have much greater range than any built-in Palm IR.

$60 touchscreen remote

[McSpew]

You don't need a high end universal remote unless you are obsessed with touchscreen remotes.

As somebody else already mentioned, Radio Shack has a $60 touchscreen universal remote. You don't need a high-end remote just to get touchscreen, either.

ok...

[Lxy]

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?

Re:"Stuff That Matters"

[Nick of NSTime]

Well, we are talking about controlling things remotely, so it's related.

JP1

[msheppard]

Radio shack (et.al.) have many universal remotes with the JP1 interface. You have to build your own cable (any day I solder is a good day) and then you can program any key to send any IR signal. It's pretty slick once you get it working. You gotta be able to edit Excel spreadsheets of the command arrays &c.&c, but in the end you can make the remote do anything.

M@

iPod as a remote

[adzoox]

I think one of the most innovative ideas for a universal remote was Griffin's demo of the PodMate Remote control.

Basically it converted tones into infrared signals. Unfortunately Apple asked that they drop development.

At MacWorld Expo January 2002, they used an iPod to control a Sony TV and Home Stereo system.

Now, they have released the exact same addon for the iPaq.

Does anyone know where or how to obtain a signal conversion from tone to IR?

I know that this is the same way the Macintosh TV worked. One cound take the "IR eye" from that and plug it into ANY onboard Macintosh motherboard sound connection and then use a Sony remote control to turn the unit on and control the Apple CD player or Apple Video Player.

Backwards

[DumbSwede]

The idea of programming universal remotes has always seemed backwards to me. Why not have your TV/VCR/DVD/Stereo program your remote for you instead (one button triggers a training mode)? Granted companies would have to agree to some remote standard language, but with 2-way communication between remote and home appliance, there are probably lots of interactive features just waiting to be invented. It opens the field to including remote operation to devices not normally set to have remotes (since they wouldn't actually have to bundle a remote). A really robust standard would separate buying appliances and the remotes that control them.

While we're at it, how about a capacitor or something to hold a remote's programming long enough to change the battery?

How about having the TV warn me when my remote's batteries are getting low?

Remote finder (this one has already been done), have the remote beep.

Why do most Universal remotes only have 3-6 devices? Why not 10 or 20, say by hitting a number button after a device button? It's certainly not for lack of memory.

Mostly I want my universal remote to always be able to get to the Menu/Programming/Timer operations. With a trainable remote this should be no problem. Why so many devices and universal remotes are incompatible at this level is beyond me.

While these Uber remotes no doubt address these last 2 points, they seem vast overkill for something that should be simple and flexible, but instead is stupid and obtuse.

Re:Backwards

[billtom]

You answered your own question. The reason your suggestion will never happen is because it would require consumer electronics companies to co-operate on a standard. And they really, really, REALLY hate doing that. Even when there is the potential to make lots of money they still won't (e.g. pick one re-writeable DVD standard).

All home electronics equipment could easily be interoperable by now, there's no technical obstacle and the protocols are all there. But the CE companies simply refuse to work together. They're stuck in a zero-sum game mentallity.

Just another toy -for the dog

[Denver_80203]

My dog has eaten, batteries and all, 4 remote controls. I just bought a new Yamaha reciever and within 3 days it had been consumed. I've been finding little rubber numbers in the yard.

Voice recognition

[Selanit]

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. :-)

What about Marantz

[Pinteiro]

Marantz has been manufacturing universal remote control for a decade, they have far more experience in this market. They are also pretty easy to set up and sturdy.

I like the Harmony

[larryj]

I bought the Harmony SST-768 a few weeks ago. It takes some time to get everything set up, but since I got past that I'm really liking it.

The wizards on their web page can be a bit of a pain. I started making more progress when I entered 'advanced' mode and started editing some of the XML directly.

The cool thing about the remote is that it remembers the state of your components. "Watch TiVo" is my default activity. When I hit the power button on the remote, it turns on my TV and sets everything up to watch TV (DirecTV/TiVo combo box). If I switch to my "Watch DVD" activity it knows that the TV is already on, so it doesn't send the IR code to power off the TV. Video input, receiver input, picture mode, etc are all switch as requierd. Some settings are common for different activities and the remote knows to leave those alone when switching.

Previous universal remotes that I had used required that I return to a default state to run macros. I can switch between any macro (Harmony calls 'em "activities") without worrying if the TV is on the correct video input. The remote keeps track of it and changes things accordingly.

You don't have to use discrete codes to accomplish this either (although you can). I use different picture mode settings for different activities. Video games are better on my "standard" setting while TV and DVDs use the "Pro" setting. I defined a new variable in my TV section (XML) and then added a bit of code to the various activities' sections so the remote will keep track of which picture mode it's in and send the correct IR codes as needed.

I haven't gotten around to it yet, but my next step is to define a state for the volume level on my receiver. As I switch activities, the remote will then add or subtract X volume ticks depending on how I define it. Watching a DVD will equal -12, TV -08, etc.

I'm not sure if other remotes have this abilty, but it really makes it easy to have a remote than anyone can use. Scroll the wheel, select your activity, click the wheel.

Home Theatre Master - No competition

[Wraithlyn]

I feel I am somewhat of an authority on this subject. Shortly after Christmas, I embarked on a crusade to find the perfect remote, that offered maximum flexibility and ease of use.

Over the next 2 months, I purchased and returned remote after remote, always dissapointed (until the final one.. keep reading). Here are some opinions on the various types.

Touchscreen models: Sexy, sleek, great cool factor. COMPLETELY AWKWARD TO USE once the "gee wow" factor wears off. You have to press the screen to activate it, then visually search for the button you want, then press the screen again. Zero tactile feedback. I want to be able to find the function I want without even looking at the thing.

All button models: Great for basic use, but too hard to remember what you've set special functions to, and tedious to program (when the red light blinks twice, hold down X until the red light blinks rapidly. If the light is steady and unblinking, you must then proceed to alternately pressing Y and Z while standing on your head and pointing the remote at the constellation Orion.. etc) Aside: With JP1 programming, the Radio Shack /All in One models ARE an unbelievable value and immensely flexible. Worth checking out if you're on a tight budget.

So... where does this leave us? I wanted a remote with the customizability, clarity, and easy programming of a screen model, with the tactile feedback of a buttoned model.

Enter the Home Theatre Master MX-500. (Big picture)

This is truly a dream remote. You have wonderful ergonomic design, thoughtfully placed controls, and the real show stopper: the LCD screen and side buttons. These side buttons are used to select options from the screen, in much the same way a bank machine works. You main menu consists of 10 devices (which you can rename of course), and each of these 10 devices has 2 LCD screens (20 functions) worth of programmable, custom named functions, in addition to all the regular buttons, all of which are fully programmable. And of course the LCD screen provides a full menu driven interface to the remote's features.

Here is an extremely in-depth professional review.

Here is a long list of user reviews. (Average score is 4.82 / 5, from 113 reviews)

The only remote that can top this is from the same company, the MX-700. This remote comes with a small, fully programmable buddy remote, can set full length macros on any key, and is computer programmable. It also costs $500 USD! (The MX-500 is ~MSRP $200, I got mine for $112 online)

All my friends are jealous of this remote, I can fully operate it it absolute darkness with just one hand (either left or right), a complete stranger can figure out how to operate my entire entertainment system in 5 minutes flat, it has insane IR power.. I can bounce it from other rooms no problem, and I haven't even SEEN my other remotes since the day I got this. No other remote even comes close. If you're sick of remote clutter, you need to get one these babies. I cannot heap enough praise on this thing.