It was nice for things like switching HDMI inputs; you could dynamically update the name and icon, making it more intuitive for someone who had never used the TV before and didn't know what was plugged into which port. You could also adjust settings more easily without everyone have to watch together with you on the big screen as you dug to find the obscure setting to tweak.

But your complaints were equally valid, and were a concern at the time.

I would have liked to see it ship, if just to see if customers liked it. A traditional remote still worked too. But oh well.

I have a ~2022 Samsung OLED, and it doesn't have an input button that I can find. I have to go into the home ribbon menu to find the inputs.

They have very few buttons, which you can't tell apart in the dark (unless you remember the layout) and everything must be done through the UI which tries to upsell you some streaming service everywhere.

https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/...

What TVs should be adding, though, is Wiimote functionality. Build the IR array into the bezel and let me point the remote to select something with a cursor, with arrow keys as a fallback if I'm lazy.

You could do that sanely, with e-ink display on a button.

I'm sure I'm messing up some of the details, but --

The TV needed to be connected to a network for the app to work. The university required you to register the device's MAC address before it could join the network. The TV had an ethernet port, and its MAC was printed on a sticker on the back of the TV, so I was able to get that going. But it wasn't convenient to keep an ethernet cable routed to the TV (the room was awkward) so my roommate and I wanted to get it on the WiFi.

There was literally no way to open the TV's OSD and view the WiFi MAC address with the Vizio app. You needed a physical remote to access that part of the UI.

IIRC we ended up finding an old WiFi access point and connected the TV to it in order to view its WiFi MAC in the access point's admin UI.

They could have just given us a damn remote in the box! It was infuriating.

https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Harmony-Elite-Remote-Control...

even if it was pricey. (Used to be able to get them refurbed at a decent price...) The touchscreen works really well, you can even use it to control the cursor on a PC. It has the buttons you'd expect on a remote control. It can run your Phillips Hue, CD changer, Blu Ray Player, TV everything. Makes the dominant paradigm of Apple, Netflix, Spotify and all that look like garbage, but I guess a lot of people now don't have anything to control with it anymore.

The configuration of my system got messed up and and I didn't bother to fix it because I thought they'd discontinued it; the latest I've seen is that they quit manufacturing it but they are still keeping the database up so I might trying bringing it up again.

A TV and a receiver? Sure, fine. But also the PlayStation, movie server, regular cable input, Roku and Netflix and the "Smart" features of the TV for some reason. So many redundant boxes and services.

The difference is that is does not come with a remote - instead there is either a phone app which can be used to directly control it or it can work with Alexa/Home Assistant.

I think it's a great way to "smarten" some older "dumb" devices.

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/getting-started-with-b...

Phillips used to make a great switch, for instance, that was powered by the piezoelectric effect and didn't need batteries. I got a good deal on mine but regular pricing was unreasonable and it's been replaced by something nowhere near as cool. Sengled switches work well and are well priced but whenever the power goes out (10x a year at my location) they drain the battery trying to contact the hub, so I've spent in CR2032's whatever I saved.

(I'm glad Phillips avoided making the own goal of selling off the Hue brand because we'd still like to have a few Western brands in this space. I mean, they are getting their ass kicked by the likes of

https://us.govee.com/products/govee-curtain-lights?srsltid=A...

as it is without a western competitor to DJI we'll probably lose Boeing and Airbus within my lifetime)

I had one of these and oddly loved it, a bit of a geek toy.

If there is another person at home I can boot a second Raspberry connected to another cable from the antenna or connect one of those devices to the HDMI input of my TV that sits unused in a corner of my living room. It's not usual to watch something with other people nowadays.

With this arrangement everybody can watch TV anywhere in the house and carry it wherever they go without having to pause the stream.

So I gotta imagine Samsung/LG will eventually just make apps anyways. Why bother with a touch screen remote that has to be a similar size anyways

its just 1 button and it does what the built in AI predicts you wanna do.