Why Logitech Just Killed the Universal Remote Control Industry | Hacker News Reader

Why Logitech Just Killed the Universal Remote Control Industry

mattstoller.substack.com

Long time Harmony user here. Even prior to the Logitech buyout, Harmony was seemingly hostile to Mac and UNIX/Linux users, only reluctantly rolling out support for Mac in later years under Logitech. The Concordance and Congruity projects were a stab at UNIX/Linux support using Harmony's online backend:

https://www.phildev.net/harmony/

If there is any hope of opening up or cloning Harmony's vast database it may be possible to leverage Concordance and Contruity for developing replacement projects to Logitech's original.

Of course another approach is using customizeable IR-equipped devices, but the Harmony database would still be the missing goldmine for universality.

I think the real competition for a harmony is just HDMI CEC.

I recently moved and got a new TV. It can control everything (NVidia Shield + sound bar) with its remote via CEC. So I no longer need a Harmony for this simple setup.

If I had kept my old receiver, then I'd have needed to port my Harmony setup forward.

This is rare that it actually works from what I understand. I had installers come and replace my tv/receiver and gave them a hard time when they wanted to use a universal remote instead of the lg remote which was pretty slick. I figured they were being lazy but cec indeed did not work properly no matter how much I tweaked settings.

doesn't answer the question posed in the title.

I haven't seen a good explanation why logitech decided to kill that business. The database was built by the users so its not like they have an army of employees doing that part.

It might be time to build another IR database in the public domain while we still have access to the logitech one.

As much as everyone here hates smart TVs and, perhaps, sound bars, for many people they function as a universal living room device, and those people don’t need other remotes. I’d suspect this is a significant impediment to growth at a scale Logitech is interested in.

I’d bet smartphone remotes/casting are a smaller factor.

I get why they are shutting it down. I and many like me only use one button on our remote, the power button. Everything else is on my truly universal remote, my smartphone. If my tv was able to turn on and off from my phone, then I'd never touch a remote again.

Recently upgraded from a slow Fire TV to an Apple TV. The Apple TV can control the TV via HDMI and turn it on. Integration on other Apple Devices is good as well.

My phone has an IR blaster and it's pretty good for controlling just about any device as long as support software is there. The interface on my phone is also a lot clearer than the weird plastic remote that came with the office AC. The device is a Xiaomi and this has the downside of the IR database mostly consisting of Chinese products.

It's a shame to see how the IR blaster has disappeared from phones, just like the FM radio functionality that the SoC probably still has support for. Only weird, cheap, and very Chinese phones still seem to sport these features.

Hm, IIRC if you still have an (ideally forward-facing) headphone jack, I believe there were cheap plug-ins (essentially IR LED on a 3.5 mm connector) that would provide the functionality given a proper software.

True, but audio jacks are hard to find in anything above a midrange phone these days.

You're also often limited to the app provided by the manufacturer of the 3.5mm dongle, which isn't always great.

Sometimes this is true for me, other times I still have to turn on the display with one remote, turn on the speakers with another remote, turn on the playstation with another controller. From there all my "castable" apps (youtube, netflix, spotify, others) also recognize my playstation as a device.

The other path is with the chromecast, which turns on with the display.

Did you ever notice that Playstations do audio much better than Chromecast? So I rarely use my Chromecast. The several hundred dollar difference is not an argument to me, I expected the Chromecast to not have a difference in audio.

Apple TV can be turned on from your mobile. (Not just Apple TV but your actual TV along with it too)

I simply cannot stand to use my phone as a remote. I hate it with a passion every time my real remote's batteries die and I have to use the phone app for a while before I get around to getting more AAAs.

There are 2 problems for me: 1) I cannot tell by feel what to press to quickly mute, jump back 10 seconds, pause, etc. I have to look at the phone.

2) When I look at the phone, my phone has locked. So I have to wait a second for face-id (or enter a passcode if its too dark).

I have enough issues with phone usage. I def don’t want to use it as a remote.

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