7 ms·
It's not the first pointless downgrade of the LG remote: they've already removed the pause button. Now pausing and unpausing is done with the general-purpose c
by pornel 2y ago
It's not the first pointless downgrade of the LG remote: they've already removed the pause button.
Now pausing and unpausing is done with the general-purpose click-wheel, is up to each app to implement, and is dependent on the UI state.
If a wrong element is focused (which is not hard to do, because the button is a scroll wheel surrounded by directional buttons), you may end up toggling subtitles or some other option when trying to pause or unpause.
It used to be a hardware button that always worked, was trivial to find by feel, easy to activate, and worked instantly.
Now it's "wait, I need to pause! Oops, I moved the scroll wheel button by a notch when pressing it, so it's a mouse cursor now! I fast-forwarded to the second half of the movie and the audio is in French."
- sieabahlpark 2y ago[dead]
- mattbee 2y agoJust like cars, I do not put it past TV manufacturers to sell a dedicated touch-screen TV remote before the decade is out. 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.
- Xlythe 2y agoOh, 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.
- mitthrowaway2 2y agoWhen 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.
- alsobrsp 2y agoLook at fancy pants input button over here. 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.
- gardenerik 2y agoOh, how I hate the new Samsung remotes! 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.
- devmor 2y agoWas 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.
- InsideOutSanta 2y agoYeah, 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.
- dmonitor 2y agoThe Wii U gamepad had this functionality. It was pretty handy for the reasons you describe. https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1358/~/tv-remote-function-overview 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.
- lern_too_spel 2y agoThey already have phone apps.
- cgh 2y agoVizio 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.
- cmckn 2y agoI 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.
- velcrovan 2y agoI 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.
- PaulHoule 2y agoThis was one hell of a remote control https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Harmony-Elite-Remote-Control/dp/B014PDFP9S?th=1 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.
- dpedu 2y agoRandom bit of trivia: the older versions of these had the interface implemented in Flash. That's right, Adobe Flash Player on a remote.
- nl 2y agoAgree - I had one of these and was the only way to get all my hi-fi gear and other things working together. Everything just worked.
- brailsafe 2y agoMy 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.
- vidarh 2y ago
- dpedu 2y agoI gotta say: Palm Pilots with IR blaster apps such as OmniRemote check most of these boxes, but we loved them. In 2004.
- syndicatedjelly 2y agoIt's been quite a while, but I vaguely remember my original PSP-1001 had an IR blaster program (app?) on it as well
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rileymat2 2y agohttps://www.sony.com/electronics/support/remote-controls-remotes-for-home-audio-video/rm-av3000/manuals https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/remote-controls-rem... I had one of these and oddly loved it, a bit of a geek toy.
- bb88 2y agoI've been in the process of making my own macro pad recently, maybe it's time to make my own remote as well.
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoThat's essentially what the Philips Pronto remotes were.
- pmontra 2y agoWell, 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.
- anon7000 2y agoPhone 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
- Refusing23 2y agohow about a smart-remote its just 1 button and it does what the built in AI predicts you wanna do.
- freedomben 2y ago> they've already removed the pause button. This is utterly aggravating. That's literally the button I use the most by a factor of 10x. The center button behavior differs between apps and is inconsistent enough to drive me crazy. This just makes me want to live more exclusively inside a single app, and that app is without question going to be Jellyfin. I'm certainly not a normal consumer, but I'm just moving further and further away from what they want.
- PaulHoule 2y agoJellyfin is so bad on my XBOX I'm thinking of going back to Plex. I was really angry when Plex pivoted to a FAST service but after I got sucked into Tubi it didn't seem fair to punish Plex anymore.
- vrighter 2y agowhat's a FAST service? never heard of the term, and the phrase "fast service" isn't exactly easily searchable.
- limbero 2y agoI think it's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_ad-supported_streaming_television https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_ad-supported_streaming_te...
- vrighter 2y agothanks a lot!
- PaulHoule 2y agoGive Tubi a try, it's like broadcast TV and the lower tier of cable channels died and went to heaven. Fox news is spending heavily on it at a loss right now so it's in the early phase of the enshittification cycle. (I didn't take it personally when I gave it my email and it showed me retargeted ads for brands I'd disengaged with years ago)
- VTimofeenko 2y agoAre there 3rd party remotes for these TVs? Or is the problem that there is not even a general "pause" command now? I got an old TCL(don't get me started) and when the original remote died I got a noname IR thing that is even capable of switching to a custom channel.
- sebazzz 2y ago> Are there 3rd party remotes for these TVs? Or is the problem that there is not even a general "pause" command now At least on my LG C1 my old Logitech Harmony still does a good job. Note though that the native remote uses Bluetooth or since other radio technology and the Harmony uses infrared.
- PhiSchle 2y agoThird party remotes do work on most TVs, I use a Nvidia Shield Remote on my TCL over bluetooth for example. I cannot however turn the TV on using that remote. Having a dedicated Play/Pause Button is still worth it however.
- rr808 2y agoMy 10 year old LG is like this. Are you sure they ever had anything different? I dont really like it but never had a problem.
- colechristensen 2y agoMy LG remote from maybe 5ish years ago has a pause button
- glxxyz 2y agoIt looks like there was no pause in 2015: https://www.lg.com/us/tv-audio-video-accessories/lg-AN-MR650-magic-remote https://www.lg.com/us/tv-audio-video-accessories/lg-AN-MR650... Play and pause were there in 2016: https://www.lg.com/us/tv-audio-video-accessories/lg-AN-MR600-magic-remote https://www.lg.com/us/tv-audio-video-accessories/lg-AN-MR600... There were other weird designs over the years too: https://media.us.lg.com/transform/b10eeb90-5206-4f69-9959-bc21eb63fca2/magic-remote_herobanner_900x600 https://media.us.lg.com/transform/b10eeb90-5206-4f69-9959-bc...
- gambiting 2y agoMy 2020 LG CX has a pause button on the remote, but my mum's 2021 C1 doesn't have it anymore. It's a lot worse to use because every time you pick up the remote the cursor appears on the screen and clicking the general purpose wheel will click whatever the cursor is pointing to, so sometimes you need to aim the remote(carefully!) to pause, instead of just having a button for it like on my remote.
- epistasis 2y agoCan you imagine if management were to prioritize what consumers wanted, rather than jumping onto the latest trend for their careers? We might have TVs with remote locator buttons that would make the remote control ping audible via a press of a button on the TV? So much time saved and happiness granted with ancient technology. But no, AI. Bad product folks who want to experiment and make their mark more than they want to improve the experience.
- esalman 2y agoI discovered that my OnePlus has a IR blaster. Now I use my phone as remote - and it works on a variety of models (have Samsung and Vizio in house).
- zeroonetwothree 2y agoWell I guess I’m not upgrading. Pause is the button I use the most
- nox101 2y agonot looking at how bad the new LG remote is but my all time favorite remote is the Apple remote from like 2010ish. This one : https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/949603040 https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/949603040 White, plastic, 6 buttons (up, down, left, right, select, cancel). That's it. Worked great with Kodi on an Intel MacMini. Could easily do everything I needed to do. Since then they first ruined it by changing it be a kind of metal that felt like chalk on my hands. It was horrible https://cdsassets.apple.com/live/7WUAS350/images/apple-tv/apple-tv-aluminum-remote-01.png https://cdsassets.apple.com/live/7WUAS350/images/apple-tv/ap... Then they broken it completely by making it larger with a touch surface. https://cdsassets.apple.com/live/7WUAS350/images/apple-tv/apple-tv-remotes-apple-tv-4k-apple-tv-4gen-01.png https://cdsassets.apple.com/live/7WUAS350/images/apple-tv/ap... It was impossible to use because trying to select (clicking the touch surface) would always end up also adding left/right/up/down events so you'd always select something other than what you wanted to select. I have no idea how that POS ever made it out of user testing. They made it slightly better but still broken by changing it back to a circle. https://cdsassets.apple.com/live/7WUAS350/images/apple-tv/apple-tv-siri-remote-2gen.png https://cdsassets.apple.com/live/7WUAS350/images/apple-tv/ap... But the circle itself is still a touch surface and still always moves your selection as you try to select something. It's atrocious! In any case, the 6 button remote back from the beginning was the best. I still use Kodi on an AppleTV now, but I use a separate remote and only use 6 buttons. When something is playing, pressing the cetner button pauses, pressing again unpauses, pressing up/down adjusts the volume. Pressing back exits the movie, holding the center for 2 seconds brings up more detailed controls. Kodi also has the best queing experience of any app. Pressing right skips forward 10 seconds, again within some threshhold, 30 second, then 1 min, 3 mins, then 10. I can get anywhere in a movie instantly. Compare this to Netflix, or Apple TV+, or Crunchyroll, or Amazon, etc... They all suck. Generally left/right jumps +10 or +30 period. If you want to get to the end you're forced to hold right, wait for it to go into "fast forward mode", then press right for 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x, Then wait forever as it slowly goes through the movie. So bad.
- qkeast 2y agoFor what it’s worth, the touch surface can be disabled so that the latest remote only accepts physical presses. I discovered this after losing my mind for a month or so, and it’s made a huge difference.
- bjoli 2y agoWhat are the odds that this was tested with actual users? I remember a time long ago, in a galaxy far far away where the user experience mattered more than whatever whims designers had. My old car, for example, had big buttons that were meant to be usable with gloves. That was a godsend in the Swedish winter. It wasn't very pretty, but the memory of it makes me want to scream every time I have to use a touch interface in a car.
- m463 2y agoI have an LG remote and hate it. Why do I need to use an onscreen pointer to switch inputs? I like their OLED, but mostly I chose LG more because I was voting against the other guys who are worse.
- RisingFusion 2y agoI had an LG TV and it developed a terrible blue tint after 2 years because LG used low quality backlight LEDs. So now I am avoiding LG. It's the only TV I've had in my life that deteriorated. I am still using an 18 year old Sony in another room which is still as good as new.
- baq 2y agoI've got an old one (C7) and you don't have to use the pointer for most things; switching inputs definitely works with just the cursor arrows. The new remote is abysmal, though. I guess I need to get my hands on a 2024 model before this one blows up, contrary to what I planned originally.
- bestham 2y agoYou can buy a LG compatible remote on Amazon for $ 10-20 with a pause button that will most certainly work. The codes are still being interpreted, just that they removed or repurposed the physical button on the remote. My kid destroy LG remotes on a yearly basis and I have purchased the cheap one (non magic wand or whatever they call the Wii like experience). It does what I need it to do. Change the brightness, input, channel and volume as well as HDMI-Arc play pause.
- klausa 2y agoI know this is unequivocally a bad solution, but LG is weirdly good about supporting remotes across generations. No guarantees about the 2025 model, but a couple of years back I specifically bought a _newer_ remote, because my 2018 model didn’t have a pause button, but the 2019 ones did. Everything worked fine out of the box.
- prmoustache 2y ago> It's not the first pointless downgrade of the LG remote: they've already removed the pause button. I don't have an LG nor a TV but why would you need a pause button. Isn't it more interesting to have play button act as a toggle play/pause like on any software video/music player?