jkap

jae

@jkap

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jkap
@jkap

honestly the biggest sin of the ps5 remote is that it completely breaks from the Standard Sony Remote Style towards some roku bullshit.

my blu-ray player, sound system, and hi-fi are all sony and they all have a Share Remote Design. my CD/minidisc combo player fits what is clearly an older version of the same style (2002) but i don't have that one unfortunately

the blu-ray player strays furthest from common decency by including a Netflix button, but honestly idk what i'd put there anyway; it's not like the remote is missing useful buttons just because that's there.

i do not want a featureless white Organic Shaped object. i want a black rectangle with a bunch of fucking buttons on it. withhold this at your own peril.

also you have no fucking idea how hard it is to find good photos of remotes. everything is for am unbranded Genuine Replacement. get that shit out of here.

additional side note while i'm here: i fucking love my HT-a7000. it's extremely Not Cheap (although bought on heavy sale and split three ways it's Fine For Us), it sounds incredible, but its most incredible accomplishment is that it doesn't make me fucking furious to use it. i had a vizio soundbar that barely worked, was completely obtuse in its function, would frequently shut off while i was using it, required careful babysitting to keep it from adding delay to fucking EVERYTHING, and just made me miserable. i am willing to spend a premium for hardware that doesn't make me hate the idea of using it, and the HT-a9000 wins on all marks there. good job sony.

also funny to me that sony has two completely different products with the "a7000" model number. boy i hope someone got fired for that blunder

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in reply to @jkap's post:

authorx
@authorx

I hate remotes having dedicated buttons for Branded Services; the remote for our streaming device, a shield, has a big Netflix button at the bottom while our TV remote has several, and any time one of them is accidentally pressed it interrupts whatever we're doing no matter what device is actually being displayed on the tv, and probably can't be interrupted until it's done trying to load the service in question and probably asking for a login since we don't use it.

One of the benefits of getting a universal remote is that we could just put those away and not have any dedicated "start an app I don't want in one click" buttons on it.

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jkap
@jkap

i've got a shield pro specifically because it seems to be the only STB that can playback UHD content with dolby vision profile 7 (the blu-ray one) and i hate its remote so much. why is it a triangle. who decided. (i have overall not been thrilled with the android tv experience anyway, given that it somehow still doesn't have framerate/refresh rate matching and breaks plex every update)

i've got a logitech harmony Ultimate that i use most of the time because i don't have the brain space for the complex dance of HDMI switchers and inputs that's required to watch anything, nor do i expect anyone else to have it. i don't love it but it works well enough. unfortunately they're discontinued! and i have no idea if there's alternatives.

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authorx
@authorx

So, last year while searching for a universal remote I found basically the only viable alternative is Sofabaton. I have the Sofabaton U1 which is a relatively dumb "smart remote" (it can learn IR commands and also connect to bluetooth devices like the shield, but its macros/automation are very limited) and have been fairly happy with it, but the newer Sofabaton X1 is the one most people compare to a harmony remote (uses a hub for the IR blasting and automation, can keep track of what devices are on or off while switching, etc). Most reviews and people I've seen talking about the X1 have basically said, "eeehhhhh it sucks compared to Harmony but it's the closest thing there is now besides buying old Harmony remotes on ebay".

(meanwhile if you just google "universal remote" the results are largely tech listicles that tell you which old Harmony remotes to buy on ebay).

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hkr
@hkr

I am here for home theater posting. Home theater is an arms race that will never end, and we will only find brief respites of satisfaction before something new comes along that demands we change everything about what we know about home theater.

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authorx
@authorx

The most frustrating thing about all this (to me) is that the universal remote thing was a Solved Problem, AFAIK everybody was pretty happy with the Harmony remote series.

But then between HDMI-CEC handling a lot of basic use cases (like using your TV remote to control your video player, or having your TV turn on and off with your game system) and people's viewing habits consolidating on streaming boxes that may also be game devices or literally their TV anyway (instead of a cable box + DVD player + blu-ray, etc), they just became less popular and less profitable, so logitech stopped making them. Which means people who wanted it for no-basic use cases - or just fucking hate the official remotes packed with their devices - are shit out of luck. Of course, captive audiences also drives those pack-in remotes getting worse with hardcoded buttons as ads for other services (just like all TVs are smart TVs now which will sell data on what you watch if you let them connect to the internet).

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