[FireBeyond]

What of Logitech's Harmony system? It works around the concept of activities.

"Watch TV" - it asks initially, "What input is the TV set to?" "What remote do you use to control the volume?" "What remote to change the channel?"

And from then on, it works. It doesn't cover all on your list, but it has the potential.

[DiabloD3]

I agree with the Harmony suggestion. I bought one to replace all my remotes purely because I don't need 900 different settings that all do the same thing.

For example, I have a TV, a Bluray player, and an AV receiver. I choose the "watch a movie" task, it turns all three on, sets the TV input to the input the AV receiver is plugged into, the AV receiver to the input the Bluray player is plugged into, and then maps the play/stop/ff/rev/etc buttons to the Bluray player and the volume buttons to the AV receiver.

Every button is configurable, all the on screen menu options on the remote are configurable.

[tormeh]

That the buttons are configurable is a bug, not a feature. It doesn't come with your TV, you have to know that you should buy it and you have to set it up. It works for you, but does it work for your SO/parents or whatever? Or did you have to teach them how to use it? If yes then it doesn't really work.

An example of something similar: Ubuntu can become as simple as a stone. It would still be too complicated because it doesn't come pre-installed on officially supported PCs. Not third-party-brand-no-ones-heard-about with tentative OS support. I'm talking about an official Ubuntu PC where everything is made to fit with each other. Me and you are OK with patchworks of software and hardware, bugs and weird command line wizardy. Normal people want appliances. Windows PCs are something people treat as horrible appliances, which they've sort of learned to tolerate and work with over a decade or more of training. It's like a fridge with a control panel. Normal people need iOS. Options and customizability are bugs, not features to most people. Sometimes some (but not most) people want more than just an appliance, but they still want the minimal complexity possible given their requirements. Buying extra remotes or installing another OS is really not what they want.

Downvoters: I dragged desktop Linux into this because I'm excited about Linux and because it's hopeless as a consumer product.

[thrownaway2424]

I strongly disagree here. I have a Harmony remote, I know exactly how to use it, and I consider it a usability disaster. It definitely would not be my model for consumer device usability.

[FireBeyond]

Partially agreed - the configuration leaves a lot to be desired, but once programmed it’s good. The biggest thing for my girlfriend was the “Help” function (if she hadn’t kept the remote pointed for the entire sequence) - but that’s been largely negated by my latest upgrade, which has an IR blaster in the entertainment center itself.

[thrownaway2424]

I have the Harmony 890 and aside from the disaster that is programming it, I also find it frustrating to use. If it's decided to turn off the screen, it does so with a slow fade out, and while it's doing that you can't do anything. It's like it has one thread of execution, and while it's changing backlight brightness it ignores the buttons. This is really annoying because then you have to shake it to wake it back up and hit your button again.

Another glaring problem is how it decides to carp about low battery levels right in the middle of what you're doing. When this happens, it ignores your input until you acknowledge the low battery warning. After you acknowledge, it completely forgets what you were in the middle of doing. As if that weren't all bad enough, the battery warning can come back at any time after you dismissed the last one, including immediately, one second later, etc.

I find myself using the individual remotes more and more often in the past few years. They are stateless, have excellent battery life, and are incapable of measuring their battery levels. They don't have any of the Harmony's bad habits.

[tormeh]

I don't doubt that the remote is great. Good on Logitech. But the old remotes don't go away. They linger around like naval mines waiting for a tech-illiterate person to at best get horribly confused or at worst fuck something up. It ends up being another thing with too many features and buttons that the geek-in-residence has to teach and help everyone with.

Logitech isn't really the company to do this. Apple would be great. Their brand is perfect for this. Apple's brand is, as far as I've gathered, "open your wallet and we'll make your tech easy to use, trouble-free, beautiful and sure to impress your friends". Logitech is "that keyboard/mice company". Would you buy a TV and HiFi from Logitech?