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Then TV Surround Sound came out of the shadows, and the TV and stereo merged. Now the system has a TV, a CD player, a VCR, a DVD, the stereo receiver, cable, and sometimes a satellite receiver. Talk about multiplied convenience – now there are six or more remote controls. Enjoyment is only seven to ten clicks away!
It’s been many years since the first consolidation of remote controls was offered to the consumer. Nowadays, you can get a 4-in-one unit at the drugstore for $8, and it already knows how to talk to the equipment you have. That's the feature, and that's also the downfall. Universal remotes have a library of IR commands built in, which you select to match your equipment. Some also are “learning”, meaning that they can memorize the commands sent by some other remote control and then send them again on cue. The more powerful of these universal remotes can also send a string of commands in a determined order that will execute a number of commands to several different devices. This “macro” capability allows users to automate a series of events with a single button.
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While
multiroom music was struggling to getting its legs, the real center of
home entertainment became, well, the “home entertainment center”.
One shrine to technology was typically built in a family room or den,
hands off to anyone but THE MAN OF THE HOUSE. His very masculinity could
be measured in watts, his worth in woofers, his future in tweeters. Complexity
was its own reward – and its own curse. So remote control began
to become somewhat common for home stereo.
This
stage is in full effect for many households today. A stack of remotes
on the coffee table, and only THE MAN knows which ones, in what order
will result in any sound or light. But the next evolution is, as always,
well und
erway.
Programming
macros takes planning and patience. The best remotes have some kind of
touch screen with graphical cues to make it easier to understand programming
and results. Even so, most users never try to combine many commands. That’s
because the “spray and pray” nature of sending optical IR
commands with critical timing to a number of devices at once leads to
frequent errors and missed orders. The classic example is where a macro
turns on both the TV and the cable box. The same command to turn them
on also turns them off again. Fine… until the TV misses the ON and
stays off while the cable came on. Press again, the TV comes on, but the
cable goes off. And 
again…
yikes. Now imagine the potential for trouble when you try to combine four
or more commands. 
So
in practical terms, instead of having to understand six remotes, now you
have to understand how to use the single remote six different ways. A
virtual button war rages on, with some remote makers competing to offer
the most buttons, while others seek ways to make more buttons look like
less.
The
only certain result of a standard universal remote is that now you have
the ability to lose the remote to everything at once, instead of one at
a time. As for easing the control of the entertainment center, increasingly
called the “home theater”, not so much. The fact is that if
the universal remote is merely a consolidation of all the separate remotes,
the operator must know what combinations of equipment must be set in what
ways to get anything to happen. That's actually harder to do
with only one remote than with several, and is simply beyond too many
people.
