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Universal Remote's Days Are Numbered
theodp writes "While the universal remote has served humanity with distinction, its days are numbered, and your smartphone is to blame. Whether you want to control your music, your television or your PowerPoint presentation, there's probably a solution using your phone. Try as it might, the universal remote simply can't navigate the digital world the way the smartphone can — it's a lot easier to put the remote's abilities in the smartphone than vice versa."
But a smart phone has limited "hard" buttons. .. and as nice as touch screens are.. it's hard to operate them lying in bed through one half-open eye.
Personally I`m waiting for voice recognition to become practical. I think that's more the future of how we control our devices.
I feel you, man. It sucks to post these non-stories, but it's slim picking and what you gonna do?
That's it, right?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
There are a lot of people that won't buy a smart phone to operate all their devices.
I don't know how it works in the US, but in Europe (or at least where I live) there are 348576384756876 different, conflicting coding standards for infrared messages, so the only real place for your Universal Remote is in the trash can.
Not that I condone using phones for remote control...
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams [...]."
While the screwdriver has served humanity with distinction, its days are numbered, and your hammer is to blame. Whether you want to control your nails, there's probably a solution using your hammer. Try as it might, the screwdriver simply can't hammer the nails the way the hammer can -- it's a lot easier to put the screwdriver's abilities in the hammer than vice versa.
If I want to change the channel on my TV I'm not going to muck around with the 'remote' app on my smartphone. I'm going to pick up an actual remote and press the button.
Smartphones are great for a lot of things, but proper remote controls have a set of fixed, tactile buttons that respond instantly. Versatility isn't worth much if it's a pain to use.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
If there was a way to mod articles, I'd mod this -1 Troll and -1 Flamebait.
The universal remote has its uses, the smartphone has its own, and, last I checked:
Just because it has less use for presentations doesn't mean that it's dying. If anything, other uses may be found for it, including presentations.
Also, why replace a $20 item (or even less) with a $200 item (or even more) if all you're going to do is watch TV and DVDs with it? If the universal remote is truly dying, then the big phone companies have won the war of overconsumption: sell a product that will be obsolete in two years, make it have tons of uses, and have the buyer depend more and more on it such that s/he deems it absolutely necessary and buys it again and again as newer versions come out with even more feature creep, while making everyone pay the full price for all the features despite many of the buyers not using even an eighth of them.
I'd rather keep that remote, thanks. Mine has lasted around... 10 years now?
Yes, my wife would love it if every time I left the house she was stuck watching Top Gear repeats all day because my phone was the only thing that controlled the TV.
Harmony FTW.
It's all fun and games until a 200' robot dinosaur shows up and trashes Neo-Tokyo... Again
The person who wrote this article has clearly never used a Logitech Harmony remote. Best remote I've ever owned.
"In case of emergency, break glass. Scream. Bleed to death."
Phones are for PHONING!!!!! not texting, not taking pictures, nor playing mp3s, nor controlling radio controlled cars or anything else..
I hate having to learn to use my new nokias as it is, without piling in more crap.
Whatever happened to "Do one job and do it well".. Seems nowadays it's lets cram as much crap into something that half works.
I'm using my phone/out of the house and someone else (sat the 13 year old kid) wants to watch a DVD?
Or does everyone need a smart phone as opposed to one $20 remote on the coffee table?
With projects like the JP1 forum turning universal remotes into the Swiss army knife of the 21st century I hardly think the will meet their technological demise any time soon. I would rather bet my $0.02 that the killer device control app for smartphones will be remote interaction at an arbitrary distance, much like the remote DVR control applications now entering the market.
Why can't I click a button on the TV to make my remote beep when I can't find it. Maybe I should patent that.
If you had the faintest idea of the network requirements to do that, you would understand why broadcast TV (and radio) are going to be around for a long, long time.
Today, people can pretend that broadcast radio might die because they can stream content to their phone. And as long as they can do this, they think "this must be what the future looks like". It doesn't, it won't and as soon as 10-20 people in their physical area try to do the same thing they will discover the truth.
The bandwidth requirements of feeding individuals their own streams at 1080i (or even 720i) would require pretty much dedicated fiber home-to-provider. No, that doesn't exist. You can get fiber to a local node that is dedicated but then you are competing with your neighbors for bandwidth on a shared resource. And that shared resource does not have anywhere near the aggregate capacity to handle the sum of the fiber coming in to it.
When will it? Probably never. Dreaming that broadcast will end when it does is fine, but keep in mind someone has to justify the costs. A local node may serve 1000 homes. Getting fiber that will support 20MB/sec is no problem but getting a channel from the local node that will support 20Gb/sec is another proposition entirely. And at the head end where 100 of those 20Gb/sec fibers come together to compete with the incoming bandwidth now ups that requirement to 2Tb/sec.
2Tb/sec? And that is merely a small town with 100,000 homes.
Broadcast TV is going to be around for a long, long time. As will broadcast radio. The bandwidth requirements of a broadcast are so incredibly modest compared with individual streams that it is a no-brainer for anyone.
Will the bandwidth exist someday? Maybe. Will it be used to replace broadcasting? Doubtful. There will be some other use for it which will once again mean broadcast content is the only practical way to do it.
I think voice recognition is more the future of how we control our devices.
Please leave me out of your future. Few things make me more angry than calling a support number and getting a menu where I'm required to speak to the computer.
If I have to deal with a computer, at least give me the choices and let me press a damn button. Don't make me guess the right keyword, especially not in earshot of my officemates.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.