ARE ALL TV REMOTE CONTROLS BAD?

I actually enjoy the Samsung Smart tv remote…

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Here are a couple of remote projects I executed while working for Dish Network over a decade ago.
The silver remotes (in various configurations based on number of TV’s in the house) were the default offering, and the dark gray remote was offered as an ‘easy to operate’ option. The silver remotes were universal, controlling up to 4 devices. The gray remote controlled a TV and the set top box.
Universal Remote = complex (evil)
Simple Remote = less complex (less evil)
Each of these projects came with a load of requirements and conditions, including legacy concerns, usability and interface issues, set top box interfaces, etc.
But our over riding criteria for design were almost identical to these from YO:

  1. feature prioritization (making most frequently used features most dominant)
  2. tactile navigation for high priority features (feel your way to key features without looking)
  3. recognizing remote is the only physical touchpoint for the product so adding both visual and physical mass in a sculptural way

While the success of the final design is up for debate, those remote control projects were great design problems.

I remember when those came out! I think Dish and the TiVo remote really pushed that idea of being unmistakable in the “remote bin” which is really good, especially if you want to be the primary remote. The remotes I worked on for Polk and Definitive were sometimes tossed as the products had IR learn features and later HDMi added pass through commands for power and volume, relegating the remote to occasional use for bass,voice and EQ modes… but, still fun projects. Super challenging because of the BOM constraints!

The Roku remotes that frog initially and then I think Bold or New Deal designed were also interesting with the little Roku tag on them. It gave the remotes some personality.

Only remote I’ve ever seen that doesn’t suck:

It’s actually also a universal (B&O) remote for several types of TV/Audio systems, plus it’s cast (?) metal so has great weight.



Had one of these with a TV while living in DK. Haven’t tried any of the newer ones.

R

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Here’s your design brief:

I need to preview what’s on 300 channels for at least 3 weeks out
I need to know info about all of those shows, brief and indepth
I need to record 1 show or the whole series
I need to randomly channel surf
I need to quickly go to favorites
I need volume
I need mute
I need to exit
I need to go back and forward
I need to manage recorded/on demand content (save, delete, forward to other device)
I need categories for recorded/on demand content
I need to search recorded/on demand
I need to play, pause, rewind, fast forward, repeat content
I need shortcut keys
I need power
I need to change settings
I need access to apps
I need to navigate apps

There is absolutely no creep in that list. That is what is used on a weekly basis. No whining. No sanctimony. Good luck.

Yes, they all suck. Not as bad as thermostats in the pre-Nest era, but they have much to improve.

Whatever else it has, it needs to:
*Have backlighting
*Protect the user from accidentally clicking on the dangerous Power, Stop, Skip (|<< / >>|), Exit, or Eject commands. This means a tactile or physical separation from safer commands like Play, Scan (<< / >>), and Pause.

A truly great device would combine touchscreen and really good tactile buttons. Some logitech units come close.

I’d love to see the return of Sony’s jog/shuttle dial.

Rubberized coating is a plus for grip and not sliding on leather.

A beeper for finding in between sofa cushions.

Put all these things together you could have a pretty amazing unit.

That Sony jog dial was amazing. Most likely very costly.

Have you seen the Savant remotes? Very nicely done with a combo of touch screen and tactile buttons. But it only works with their propriety smart home system which is very expensive

So much great input in here! Call me utopian but cant we secretly team up and make the ultimate control remote? Like being the Justice League of design? ok that’s too much, sorry [emoji113][emoji20]

At the last company I worked for I pitched to do a universal remote. Bose had done one that ships with many of their products, and I thought it would be a good thing to be the main remote that people use and give them a better experience. The effort didn’t move forward, but I would have loved to have completed that!

That would be a great idea! Hijack the process so people use your remote (and brand) as the main touchpoint for their experience. Instead of getting people to use your remote to program another master, absorb the functions of the other remotes and make yours the master. I’m thinking there must be other use case scenarios like this but can’t come up with anything at the moment…

Funny how Apple really has pretty much fixed all the remote issues by just focusing on the software and keeping the remote simple. Original iPod did the same thing taking the shitty physical UI of MP3 players and replacing it all with a simple scroll wheel and lots of simple layered menus. Say what you want about the programming or features of Apple TV, but I can use the remote to do anything I want pretty easily. Maybe password text typing is a bit of pain, but happens so rarely and there’s always the remote app if I seriously need to enter a bunch of passwords and account info on first set up. Apple remote has 3 buttons?

R

That was exactly the idea Richard. One of the other efforts in parallel that came out of the same innovation workshop was making a sounder with a voice agent. That product was announced at CES last year and is probably one of the last under my direction in the pipeline.

The Apple TV remote did get more buttons in the current gen. You can see the evolution here. Don’t forget the blank space at the top is a D Pad and a gestural input… it is still mega simple and lovely. Plus it recharges via lightning and has voice input. Of course it doesn’t have to handle any audio settings.

What I see through this post is compromise. The Danish remote compromises usability for aesthetics. The peanut remotes compromise aesthetics for usability. The other remotes compromise everything for a reduction in development cost.

The Apple remote looks nice, but the usability question is shifted to the Apple TV. I haven’t used one, so I can’t speak for its success. I do have an LG smart TV and am shocked at how difficult navigation is. They tried hard to simplify it, but there are even more options now: cable, Netflix app, Youtube app, web browser, 6 different inputs, etc.

Hotels: The thing that always bothers me is that they have a nice 1080p HD TV in the hotel room, but they only have 480 cable and the TVs are always set up in the wrong perspective so that everything is distorted. Don’t these hotels have user experience people that check that their hotels have their TVs set up properly? It’s a crime!!!

Apple TV UI I would say is pretty close to perfect. You can do everything intuitively, with one hand, in the dark, half asleep. I don’t think I’ve ever had an issue figuring anything out. It’s pretty simple, but yet I can watch anything I want anytime I want so I’d say pretty powerful. Mine is an old version though so maybe I’m missing some features and functions. I only use Netflix and iTunes on it. Youtube the odd time. All the other apps on it are useless and wish I could delete.

R

My only beef is the forced TVos search function.

Yes, on the new one you can use voice, but not very well. I hate sliding all over left to right alphabetically. Would be much simpler if there were a simulated keyboard you could either scroll to, or point at.

Re-entering login credentials on Apps is tedious…

My Apple TV is first gen I think. I don’t have search :slight_smile:

The first gen remote is definitely more pure. With the second gen I have a few issues:

  1. the gesture pad can have a lot of false positives (especially if you are a fidgeter)
  2. when using voice search, I haven’t found an easy way to clear the field if it searched the wrong thing
  3. it would have been nice to add volume, it is cleaner without it, but this ensures you need a second remote, and not all content has the same volume standard

It is still one of the best remotes out there for my purposes.

Simulated keyboards are an admission of failure. There has to be a better way.

What bothers me more than remotes is the terrible UI/Menu design I have seen in some TVs.

If they had hired an experienced UI designer who has done complex UIs for desktop software before they might have ended up with better ideas.

As far as the remote itself goes, it might be time to create something like a console controller for TVs.

Holographic TVs are on the far horizon with the possible capability to change viewing angle or dolly and orbit content like an OpenGL viewport.

The classic remote won’t cut it foe those new TVs

Good point, a lot of those TV UIs are really rough.

Somewhat related, I worked on an onscreen UI for a sounder years back. The Sounder had the ability to be a content switcher, so you plugged all your sources into the bar that existed down on the cabinet, and then read one HDMI up to the TV so we Ould put graphics on screen for volume, bass, center channel (vocal frequencies) and source switching (I actually still use this product everyday in real life)… we worked through all of the screen and how they would work, but unbeknownst to me the engineering team switched out the graphics processing module for a cheaper one so all of the graphics we spent tons of time perfecting now looked like they were produced by an Atari … lesson learned, never presume that what you spec is what is going to get made, always double and triple check throughout the development process.