[HN Gopher] Why Logitech Just Killed the Universal Remote Contro...
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       Why Logitech Just Killed the Universal Remote Control Industry
        
       Author : occamschainsaw
       Score  : 17 points
       Date   : 2021-05-30 18:24 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (mattstoller.substack.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (mattstoller.substack.com)
        
       | cf100clunk wrote:
       | Long time Harmony user here. Even prior to the Logitech buyout,
       | Harmony was seemingly hostile to Mac and UNIX/Linux users, only
       | reluctantly rolling out support for Mac in later years under
       | Logitech. The Concordance and Congruity projects were a stab at
       | UNIX/Linux support using Harmony's online backend:
       | 
       | https://www.phildev.net/harmony/
       | 
       | If there is any hope of opening up or cloning Harmony's vast
       | database it may be possible to leverage Concordance and Contruity
       | for developing replacement projects to Logitech's original.
       | 
       | Of course another approach is using customizeable IR-equipped
       | devices, but the Harmony database would still be the missing
       | goldmine for universality.
        
       | detaro wrote:
       | doesn't answer the question posed in the title.
        
         | smackeyacky wrote:
         | I haven't seen a good explanation why logitech decided to kill
         | that business. The database was built by the users so its not
         | like they have an army of employees doing that part.
         | 
         | It might be time to build another IR database in the public
         | domain while we still have access to the logitech one.
        
       | jVinc wrote:
       | I get why they are shutting it down. I and many like me only use
       | one button on our remote, the power button. Everything else is on
       | my truly universal remote, my smartphone. If my tv was able to
       | turn on and off from my phone, then I'd never touch a remote
       | again.
        
         | vmception wrote:
         | Sometimes this is true for me, other times I still have to turn
         | on the display with one remote, turn on the speakers with
         | another remote, turn on the playstation with another
         | controller. From there all my "castable" apps (youtube,
         | netflix, spotify, others) also recognize my playstation as a
         | device.
         | 
         | The other path is with the chromecast, which turns on with the
         | display.
         | 
         | Did you ever notice that Playstations do audio much better than
         | Chromecast? So I rarely use my Chromecast. The several hundred
         | dollar difference is not an argument to me, I expected the
         | Chromecast to not have a difference in audio.
        
         | leipert wrote:
         | Recently upgraded from a slow Fire TV to an Apple TV. The Apple
         | TV can control the TV via HDMI and turn it on. Integration on
         | other Apple Devices is good as well.
        
         | jeroenhd wrote:
         | My phone has an IR blaster and it's pretty good for controlling
         | just about any device as long as support software is there. The
         | interface on my phone is also a lot clearer than the weird
         | plastic remote that came with the office AC. The device is a
         | Xiaomi and this has the downside of the IR database mostly
         | consisting of Chinese products.
         | 
         | It's a shame to see how the IR blaster has disappeared from
         | phones, just like the FM radio functionality that the SoC
         | probably still has support for. Only weird, cheap, and very
         | Chinese phones still seem to sport these features.
        
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       (page generated 2021-05-30 23:02 UTC)