TV Remotes
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Does anyone else get frustrated and overwhelmed by these evil little devices? You'd think they should have it figured out by now but no—these things are still barely useable.
Feel free to share your rants. -
There are some pretty horrific examples, yes. Although I recently bought a new TV and it has this remote:
Which is not such a bad one. The buttons are quite large and well-annotated. I also have a low-end Logitech harmony but that isn't a solution really, too much fidgeting around to get it somewhat properly working. Something like a Peel or RedEye would probably work quite well to replace them though, but they are still a bit expensive. Although they apparently managed to take ALL the bad things about a remote and STILL put it into the RedEye app. Look at this mess:
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TV remotes have definitely reached Microsoft Word status. I can't recall using anything more than the volume, channel, mute, input device and power buttons. Put those together with the number pad and I'm sure you can get creative with your TV remote design.
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There is only one TV remote that is awesome: TiVo.
I loved that remote when we had a TiVo, but now we use a local cable provider's DVR and its remote is fail :/ -
@tadfry: Any images of that specific remote?
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It is great. The buttons always seemed to be where you expected them to be while using it. -
Here's a particularly bad remote from our local satellite provider (DStv):
Those colored buttons all do different things at different times. But perhaps nothing is worse than the generic Cyberhome DVD remote:
I wrote more about the usability of remotes here -
Has anyone seen the Direct TV iPad App? It's really a great experience. You can browse the guide (which is faster than the box guide), record shows, watch shows and the Remote has a full view and a condesed view.
It really is a great way to watch & manage TV.The Main View
Remote Full View
Remote Condesned View
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There can be only one:
Bang & Olufsen.
Granted, it's still a lot of buttons but my overstimulated self is thankful it's not cheap plastic and doesn't glow in the dark.
Obviously, as soon as Digital TV providers fine-tune their UIs and create more interactivity, we can finally just use our phones and have the TV respond over the web.
