[opendtv] Re: Remote controls -- where's the outrage?
- From: Kon Wilms <kon@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 05 Oct 2004 23:55:36 -0700
Henry Baker wrote:
> The DirecTV remote is better than two remotes, but it still has
> a significant problem -- if you want to turn on the TV, you have
> to change "modes" on the remote to be talking to the TV. If you
> make a mistake and hit the on/off button while talking to the
> DirecTV box, it turns the DirecTV box off. Even worse, if you
> change channels while in the "TV" mode, it switches away from
> Channel 3 (or "video1"), so you end up watching snow.
>
> Why is producing an easy-to-use remote so difficult? We have
> a TiVo box, and they seemed to have gotten the problem solved
> better than the standard DirecTV remote.
Just an idea, or suggestion, or whatnot -- we recently moved and the
current house was initially wired for cable distribution. I installed
the tivo, disconnected the cableco from the wire, and used their wiring
to feed the tivo's signal around the house. I have 900Mhz IR to RF
converters next to each set I use. One tivo remote controls any of them.
If you want to lay some more cash out, get the IR sensors that sit
inline on the RF feed and use OOB frequencies to send commands back to
the central STB.
> state by using a constant signal pattern. Similarly, the exact
> same signal switches among the different inputs to the TV, so
> you end up cycling through them. So the basic IR protocols are
> defective.
To be fair some TVs have multiple levels for their menus - i.e. level 1
gives you the input menu, keep pressing the same button to cycle the
inputs. However when you have level 1's menu onscreen, you can also pick
an input directly. I used that to get around the problem. As for the
learning and intelligent remotes, its quite easy to create a virtual
'on' button as well as 'off' button, and tie macros to each one
(something you want to do because you dont want to be waiting a few
seconds to turn the tv back on while the macros are firing off into
lalaland).
Cheers
Kon
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:
- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at
FreeLists.org
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word
unsubscribe in the subject line.
Other related posts:
