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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

> A remote designed by someone who thought about it for ten seconds (why do modern TVs have dozens of buttons no one ever uses?).

I'd prefer the remote as an app on my phone. My desk is covered with remotes. Remotes are so 1980s :-/

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Physical remote > any app. By far.

Die apps, die. I want dedicated remotes for lights, stereo, curtains, garage door, and TV.

Apps won’t be around – forget 20 years, 5 years if you’re lucky. A company can disappear along with its stupid fucking app.

About the only advantage an app has is a keyboard.

> A company can disappear along with its stupid fucking app.

Absolutely true, which makes a good argument also for going back to websites and pages (HTML5 helps a lot) instead of the apps business model that basically brought us back to the pre-www era. Also regarding the phone (mis)use as remote, why nobody mentions latency? Every smartphone I tried had an absolutely atrocious UI latency even compared to my 30 years old Amiga 500, why should I want to use it instead of a dedicated device that does the job immediately and I can substitute with 5€, and sometimes even repair?

Hi systemvoltage!

We heard you like remotes, so how about a remote with dedicated, non-reprogrammable buttons to open apps you never use that don't even exist anymore?

Sincerely, Roku

How about arrow keys and an ok button?

     ^
  < OK! >
     v

Maybe one that isn’t tied to a box that stuffs ads in the UI?

> A company can disappear along with its stupid fucking app.

They can also disappear and when you lose your remote, too bad. (That's why remotes go for $$ on ebay.)

A lot of the responses disagree. I generally prefer physical remotes, but a touchscreen remote could be pretty sweet for very complex systems (think whole-room/whole-house systems that integrate A/V with lighting, HVAC, etc.) if implemented well. But the whole interaction model with phones and apps is just... wrong for this usecase. The delays, the many swipes and taps just to get to the right screen, the delays, waiting for the app to load and connect to the network, and also the delays.

I've been meaning to hack an old phone to be an instant-on remote with some custom software, but there are always dozens of higher priority projects. If anyone wants to hire/partner with me to build such a thing though...

Logitech's line of Harmony remotes were (are?) great for this. Physical buttons, programmable sequences, and a touch screen.

The AppleTV lets you use your iPhone as a remote. I always reach for the physical remote first. The phone remote is just a huge pain — the physical remote just works.

^this. Though I do enjoy having the app as a backup for when I can't find the damn remote and am too lazy to look for it.

You'd prefer it until you try using it. When you want to reduce the volume the last thing you need to do is go looking for the app. Now a watch app, that's something.

On iPhone, there is a built in remote app in control center, then you use the volume buttons on the phone to adjust the TV volume. It’s part of the OS, not the remote app from the App Store, and I’ve found it to be a good fit for those emergency volume adjustments. Sharing so others can benefit from what took me a while to discover :)

For that situation, wouldn't you use voice control? I can say "OK Google mute" in less time than it takes to reach for a remote.

Sure. Assuming your voice assistant works first time. Otherwise the dialog would go a little more like this:

Me OK Google mute

Me> OK...Google....mute

Me> OKGOOGLE mute

G> Sorry, I don't understand

Me> mute...

Me> MUTE MUTE MUTE MUTE MUTE

Me> OKGOOGLE MUTE

G> What would you like to mute?

Me> The TV

Me> Mute the fucking TV Google

Me> OKGOOGLE MUTE THE FUCKING TV

G> Sorry, I don't understand

Me> Fuck it. I should have just looked for the controller to begin with.

This comedy piece usually sends my family into laughter when I try to ask Google Auto to play a song or to call someone.

I end up with some vulgarities and ask my children to do it the old fashioned way (that is to tap the name on their phones, not to use smoke signals)

I stopped wondering where kids pick up vulgarities after I caught myself years ago yelling at a guy in another car.

And we usually end up insulting Alexa as well.

I got into a very similar conversation with Chase's robo call the other day. Went like this:

C: bla bla bla, if you want to speak to a representative say "representative".

Me: representative

C: sorry i couldn't understand, please chose an option or say representative to speak with one

Me: re-pre-sen-ta-tive

C: (same answer as before)

Me: REPRESENTATIVE

C: (same answer as before)

Me: GO FUCK YOURSELF

C: Ok, I'll call a representative

I want to believe that their system either sensed the tension in my voice or saw the expletive and decided to call for adult supervision.

I'm not an native English speaker so I have an accent (which isn't too heavy, but still). Using any form of speech recognition is an instant fuck-show.

The standard polite way to request an agent is: "operator operator fuck fuck fuck"

If I roar "I WANT TO SPEAK TO A HUMAN" into the phone, this works about 66% of the time.

My HTC One M8 back in the day shipped with a universal remote app that used the built-in IR blaster and it was fantastic. HTC's subsequent discontinuation of that app (and its replacement with a third-party app that was basically useless) is what immediately drove me to never want to buy an HTC product again.

I had that phone too and I vaguely recall that wasn't HTC's decision to cripple the IR but rather the result of HTC infringing someone else's (because naturally someone would have a patent about something as obvious as using a smart phone as an IR remote....)

we measure innovation by the number of patents given, so gotta keep up the statistics

But have you even seen an app that remained paired to any piece of hardware whatsoever for more than a few minutes?

Using any form of technology? Without dropping one side or the other into an irreparable state that requires power cycling one or both ends at least once and then hoping for the best?

It’d be cool if it worked, by my expectation is that it’ll be implemented by the guy in charge of that YouTube “cast” app that has only theoretically worked one time in a lab in Palo Alto.

Physical remotes are better, particularly if your hands are dirty (like during eating). A physical remote can be used easily without looking at it and it can be cleaned later easily too. Though it's also true that a lot of remotes are difficult to handle.

What we need might actually be a single remote for everything.

I'd argue the opposite: in my experience, a uniform glass surface is a lot easier to clean (and avoid getting dirty in the first place) than some bumpy surface with crevices into which crumbs inevitably sneak in.

Re: a single remote for everything, the term for that is "universal remote", and not once have I been satisfied with one due to the difficulty and fragility of programming it. Maybe in this day and age we can finally make that programming dead simple and robust; Logitech came close with its universal remote from years ago, but even that still wasn't quite easy enough to setup and use to fully replace all my remotes. That HDMI-CEC or whatever it's called also comes close, but it's restricted to HDMI, obviously leaving non-HDMI devices in the dust.

I had an app on my Palm Pilot for that, it was really reliable but it was annoying to light up if I was watching something in the dark. One nice thing was that the (rechargeable) battery was always charged up, unlike the physical remote which seemed to be dead more often than it should have been.

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