Oh, hey, I was working on that back in 2014 for one of the big TV manufacturers. The project was ultimately cancelled.
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.
When I press the "input" button on my remote, the TV displays a list of HDMI ports and what is plugged into them. Why would I want to be looking at my remote for that information? I'm already remote-controlling the best display device I own.
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.
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.
Was it LG? I bought a lot of their discontinued Android-powered “smart” remotes for a project a few years ago. They unfortunately had their uses for other applications limited by a battery life of less than 30 minutes - I assume they were meant to live on the included Qi-powered stand.
Yeah, the Logitech Harmony remotes that combined real buttons with a touch screen, particulary the Harmony One, were amazing. You had buttons for all of the common stuff, like volume, play, pause, numbers, and so on, but then you also had a touch screen so you could directly trigger actions that can't have physical buttons because they're different between individual setups.
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.
My more well-to-do uncle has an older version of this for his absurd setup. Idk that it was the remote's fault or not, but the system was so stupidly complicated it burned into my brain that I'd just much rather not have any of the materialistic garbage it attempted to control. Not judging exactly, because everyone has different preferences, but I just couldn't envision myself loving what amounts to the digestion of video enough to try and wrangle any of it.
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.
Maybe it's because I'm not part of the demographic that wants to own a house with a basement or extra rooms in the suburbs to begin with, but I can see how it would be quite a nice setup if you already had the house, money, and interest in media.
Nowadays, devices like the Broadlink RM4 Pro fills the same niche. It can learn both IR and Wireless protocols to remotely control most household devices (not just audio/video stuff).
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.
I'll note my displeasure that buttons appear to be disappearing for "smart lighting" products where I assume they expect that you don't want light switches and want to control everything from a phone.
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
Vizio did this back in the 2018 time frame (ask me how I know). It's a small Android tablet with the Vizio app on it. You can also just download the app onto your phone and use it that way. It was so unpopular that Vizio eventually relented and handed out normal remotes. As far as I know, their modern TVs continue to use a standard remote.
I still have my 2018 Vizio that came with the stupid android tablet. On day one I blocked internet access for the TV, plugged in an Apple TV, and put the android remote in a drawer where it sits to this day.
I bought a very cheap Vizio TV around that time (I was in college) that didn't include a remote in the box. You had to use the app.
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.
Well, my TV is it's own remote: it's one of my tablets or my phone or my laptop connected to a Raspberry Pi 3B with a TV hat, connected to the antenna on the roof. It runs tvheadend and I run its client on my devices, TVH Client on Android and TVH Player on Linux and Windows. Those devices are smart and can also run Netflix, YouTube etc without the TV spying on me. Each app can do its own spying but at least for YouTube there are alternative players that are more well behaved.
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.
Phone remotes do indeed exist! Both Roku and Apple TV (and definitely others; that’s just my direct experience) have them. They’re ok, handy when you need it.
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
Imagine:
* an unpredictably modal interface
* chugging, tasteless animations
* software updates every few weeks
* terrible battery life
* a constant glow out of the corner of your eye
* easily broken
But you can sell ads on it. You know it makes awful sense.