Core77

[yo]

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

[Rodrigo]

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

[yo]

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!

[rkuchinsky]

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

[yo]

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.

[Mr-914]

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!!!

[rkuchinsky]

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.

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

[NURB]

Apple TV UI I would say is pretty close to perfect.

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...

[rkuchinsky]

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

[yo]

The first gen remote is defiantly 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.

[Mr-914]

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