Have a remote like this one? It’s crazy, right. Too many buttons, to hard to read.
Complicated Remote Controls Stink! Quick question, how do you turn on the TV? Stumped, don’t feel bad. I was too.
We hear all to often that today’s audio video systems are just to hard to use and the remotes are even worse.
The thing to remember is that the remote and the equipment are, like I said before, a SYSTEM. For them to work in concert, they have to be able to “talk” to one another.
Simply put, the remote needs to know what “state,” on or off, the system is. This is the first problem. With older equipment, and even some of today’s cable boxes, there is no way for the remote to know if they are on or off.
That’s because they don’t use “discrete” codes. Now, that’s a fancy way of saying, either on or off. Meaning, you could press the power on 100 times and it would never turn the TV off; conversely, you could press the power off command 100 times and the TV would never turn on. Now we are getting somewhere!
Quick, look at the remote above. You only see a POWER button, NOT a power on and power off button. Even the system on / off does not know whether the components are on or off. And, therein lies the problem.
Without knowing for sure if the TV is on or off, the remote doesn’t know what command to send when you push the power button. Worse yet, some older TVs internally don’t even have a power on and power off command. Whew, that’s a lot to take in.
Learn more about Control4 smart home automation: https://www.control4.com/dealer/soundvisionllc11-28117/mooresville-nc/
One of the things we do when we program all our remotes is to make sure that the equipment we are working with always has these “discrete” codes so our systems work all the time. In fact, if we work with a client that has older equipment, we check to make sure it works. Otherwise, we tell them that they need to have newer equipment so their system will work consistently and efficiently ALL THE TIME, EVERY TIME!
And all this is just for power. Wait til I tell you how we take charge of multiple services, like cable TV, DirecTV, Dish Network, Apple TV, Roku, and any other video source you can think of. We can even cut the cord.
But that’s for next time…. https://www.svavnc.com/switching-remote-sources-demystified/
