I'm a technical guy by nature but still have 3 remotes for the tubes.

on the coffee table. One for every thing that hooks up to the TV & the TV itself.

described my home as well.

Remotes everywhere for every device. Not only that, but there are remotes to control the lights and the motion alarms in the yard and driveway.

This place is so wired up with gadgets that I've jokingly told Mr Pipi that I can't ever kick him out because I wouldn't know how to run all this stuff.

The only way a company can distinguish itself is to manufacture more and more complicated devices so it looks 'new' and 'fashionable'.

This goes back to my theme of too many people trying to make their mark on the marketplace. A dense population breeds ever more complexity.

Most of us are stuck with a single provider of cable or satellite TV services, each with their own receivers and remotes. We can't vote with our feet because alternatives don't exist - these companies have monopolies in their "service" areas. They have no motivation factor to improve their products or services, because the politicians who gave them their monopolies are usually in their pockets.

I've also read that these TV receivers are among the most energy-inefficient devices in people's homes. They waste gobs of electricity, but nothing is done to make them more energy-efficient because there is no incentive for the cable suppliers to do so. It would only cost them more money to purchase improved receivers and distribute them.

We need a huge national overhaul of the rules regulating the cable/satellite industry to get rid of these monopolies and bring real competition to the market. THEN we'd see some serious improvements.

LMAO!

but, everyone is entitled to their point of view. Nevertheless, shows being good or bad, remotes are overall just miserable.

TV has never been better in mho...

From Breaking Bad, to Game of Thrones, Shameless, Dexter, Boardwalk Empire, The Following, and on and on...

I'm loving today's shows.

on content quality, but it is and always has been in the eye of the beholder.

They require a little bit of technical expertise to setup (they have an internet based setup utility), but once they're setup, they're very easy and intuitive to use.

Already is in some cases.

But the ones that utilize wifi often have a lot of lag associated with them. I find that remote apps right now are good for home theater PCs, but not much else. I'm sure that will change in a year or so.

like EOTE said you have to spend a little time setting them up but once that's done they are very simple to use. And if you upgrade or replace the remote, even if its a different model it will transfer over the settings and be ready to go in 5 min.

What a bummer it is to buy a new $100+ remote only to have to spend an hour plus programming it before you can use it. Storing your settings on the internet is really a brilliant idea. I recently had to swap out my Harmony for a newer model and even though I'm a bit of a techie, it was very much appreciated just being able to download my old setup to my new remote.

The damn thing is black and it is hard to distinguish without my bifocals.

And why the hell do I have to press four buttons to watch channel 3?

Get off my lawn, you damn kids!

But to be fair, half of the problem is the DVR (I think). Lagggggggg is the norm.

Press "up" once, it might go up once, or it might do nothing, or it might go up twice, or it might go up three times. Every press is random. Traversing the program guide is almost comedic, trying to scroll to a show you want to watch takes about four additional keypresses on average than necessary. It's maddening.

I'm dumping ATT as soon as I can because of this issue.

And all of the marketing God's don't give a crap about what happens after the sale.

Now we have four remotes. However, our iPhones and iPads can duplicate most of the functionality with device apps.

Pretty close to abandoning the physical remote.

We have an app to control our Apple TV, Cable Box, and TV.

But not one to control the surround sound amp or Blu-ray/DVD player.

But the disc player is never used, so that's not important.

Just buy a $700 remote. My brother and his wife did this. A technician comes to your house to program it=one remote! My used, rear-projection tv cost $240!

the end of the evolution of the remote.