Remotes

[winston3338]

Thanks for the ebay link. I was checking my mail and must have bumped your link because the page opened up and I think I'll order it tonight. I'll get the Onn 6 and that will work to make the tuner digital. That's great.

[Tivoburkee]

I own 4 of the Onn 6 remotes myself, two are being used by family members, and I have two in boxes since they sold out on Walmart. 

[winston3338]

This is.it right? 

Onn Universal 6-Device Remote Control TV DVD Soundbar Streaming Box DVR NEW

[seasoned_geek]

Here is my personal experience with this.

Way back in the mid-1980s when what is now called DirecTV first came out and I was working my way through college, my brother and I went together to get our parents satellite television. The family farm got a whopping 5 channels on a good day (CBS-2 rarely came in due to their sucky low-power transmitter). If we rotated the antenna we could get a couple of others from the Champaign area. Mom was and still is a big college sports fan, not pro sports.

I think this was 1985 or 1986.

The account has remained in my name though parents took over paying for their own television after the second or third year. We have endured every scam DirecTV has come out with including the constant "a charge will appear on your bill but in 2-3 billing cycles it will be credited . . ." with the credits that never come because they are banking on you forgetting 2-3 months from now.

Throughout all of that mother has been able to keep a list beside her of the handful of channels she watches. Actually she remembers most of the numbers. She turns on the television, keys in the channel number and boom, she is watching her show. This is the tail end of 2022 so it should give you an idea of just how long she has been doing this.

The week of November 5th, 2022, DirecTV finally went a scam too far. The sold us a bill of goods about having to upgrade to HD box and said the standard definition box could be hooked to another television because it would lose all its channels. I had them send a box but they didn't send a shiny new dongle so the box could not be made to work. After more hours on the customer insult line they were going to call me back within one hour to tell me about the shipping of a new dongle for the satellite dish. Didn't happen. What did happen was they turned off and refused to reactivate the standard definition box. Right at peak college football season for mom.

Sorry, but you needed the background. Oh, you probably need to also know that I graduated with an IT degree and spent the last 35+ years writing computer software with the last decade being embedded systems and medical devices with touch screen interfaces. (Not bragging, you need a frame of reference.)

Last night I went to BestBuy and got a Roku Express.

I looked online and it seemed the "best" option for her now that we kicked DirecTV to the curb. I could get her Big 10 network with Sling TV and the sports package add on. It would be about $50/month less than DirecTV. After that I spent another 3 hours trying to get things set up for mother.

Human beings do not text!

Human beings do not buy imbecile phones. You paid $1200+ for $180 worth of parts and now carry this thing around so the world knows you are an imbecile.

This flick scrolling interface is the second worse design in the history of man. I say that as someone with over 30 years of software development experience who now helps create user interfaces for medical devices and embedded systems. So far the only user interface I've encountered worse than this device is the McDonald's Kiosk.

1. Forcing a user to scroll around without even obvious PageUp/PageDown keys is atrocious. Even DirecTV had PageUp/PageDown keys to navigate a "guide" with several hundred entries.
2. Channel numbers also made jumping through the guide painless. If you wanted to see what was on pay-per-view you just keyed in 200 or 500 or wherever they were on the guide and it jumped there. Last night with the full Sling + sports there appeared to be a thousand entries in the list that I had to scroll through one at a time.
3. Getting to your "search" feature isn't obvious and the search is highly inefficient trying to arrow around in an on-screen keyboard.
4. Finally getting to the "top menu" which has categories where you can choose "sports" is a real PITA. Once you do that there is no PageUp/PageDown to navigate the resulting "guide". With channel numbers and a remote that let one key numbers in you could put all of the "sports" channels at say, 800 rage, "movie" channels in the 500 or 1000 range, etc. A user only needs to know a couple of numbers to get to the right range. Your guide navigation is simply reprehensible.

I'm old enough to be an AARP member. This should give you some idea just how old my mother is. Her health is such that she can no longer attend church on Sunday because nobody wears a mask and there are oceans of anti-vaxers and people carrying fake vaccine cards. Another big reason for the fight with DirecTV is they wanted to send a technician of non-verifiable vaccine status into the house . . . with a credit to appear 2-3 billing cycles later . . .

Today, I have to dig through this dog's breakfast of a User Interface to try and create a "favorites" list that she can get to with minimal effort.

No, your UI isn't sexy and isn't cool. It tries to sell premium services and slaughters usability. Having a remote with channel numbers would allow a user to cut through this wretched UI design. After the thing boots a user could simply key in the channel they want and cut through this horrible UI.

Is the goal of your product to make it impossible for the thousands of people looking to flee both DirecTV and DishNetwork to use Roku? If so, you have completely achieved that by not using channel numbers. Kudos to drastically limiting your market! Investors should be so proud!

[seasoned_geek]

Thank you!

I have been studiously avoiding "smart" televisions due to stupid UI they all seem to have.

Could you please reply if you can use the numeric keypad for channel guide in Sling? Does it only work with OTA?

I don't know if they allow private messages (assuming Roku doesn't want a discussion of what to buy when their product simply doesn't work) if private allowed please feel free to send me a message with your personal nano85 experience with the user interface. Especially how it would work for someone older that has only had channel numbers all their life.

Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction!

[seasoned_geek]

I just bought a Roku Express and the remote for it doesn't have numbers. A 3960R but isn't in database yet it appears.

Guess what? You can't blame the TV manufacturer for this Roku! It's your stick and the remote doesn't have channel numbers nor does your guide.

[atc98092]

The Roku Express comes with the simple IR only remote. It is not capable of controlling the TV volume, as that requires a more advanced remote. Even then, no Roku remote offers entering channel number digits. Yes, it's been a sore spot for many years with users. Way back when streaming first started, there was no need for numbers.

But today there are many providers (such as Sling or Pluto) that has a channel grid within their app that would greatly benefit being able to directly enter a channel number. One partial workaround is to use the Roku app on a phone or tablet. The app offers an onscreen keyboard, and some (but not all) channels available on Roku devices will allow using that keyboard to enter channels. Myself, I've never tried any of them, as I rarely use one of the channels that have such a channel grid. 

[seasoned_geek]

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@atc98092 wrote:

The Roku Express comes with the simple IR only remote. It is not capable of controlling the TV volume, as that requires a more advanced remote. Even then, no Roku remote offers entering channel number digits. Yes, it's been a sore spot for many years with users. Way back when streaming first started, there was no need for numbers.

But today there are many providers (such as Sling or Pluto) that has a channel grid within their app that would greatly benefit being able to directly enter a channel number. One partial workaround is to use the Roku app on a phone or tablet. The app offers an onscreen keyboard, and some (but not all) channels available on Roku devices will allow using that keyboard to enter channels. Myself, I've never tried any of them, as I rarely use one of the channels that have such a channel grid. 

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Thanks for the response Dan. As I believe I mentioned in my rant, I don't own or want an imbecile phone. People spend $1200+ for $180 worth of parts to prove they are imbeciles. There is nothing "smart" about it.

There's really no excuse for this problem to have gone on for years. Seriously. The fact it has should have investors racing for the exit.

I work mostly in the medical device world. Having something you can't get out the door for years is ordinary there due to the highly regulated environment and massive testing requirement. This is consumer electronics where, by comparison, there is no regulation.

Pretty soon it won't be just the LG nano85 and related models. By this time next year it will be every non-ROKU television manufacturer putting out a smart TV with support for remote having numeric keypad. Some already support a wireless PC keyboard and mouse or so I'm told.

https://www.amazon.com/wireless-mouse-keyboard-smart-tv/s?k=wireless+mouse+and+keyboard+for+smart+tv

[Tivoburkee]

@seasoned_geek 

Directv didn't premiere until 1994, I got it in 1995 and had for 16 years. You description about aiming the dish to get different channels sounds like the much larger C-Span dish. Where you could intercept raw news feeds and catch Dan Rather picking his nose. 

Roku tv's can accept 0-9 commands for antenna or live tv channels from the Roku Ch. The commands are there on aftermarket universal remotes. Other channels that have their channels numbered don't work with these number commands at this time. In time maybe they will. As for Roku stand-alone devices like Ultra and express, they don't accept antenna, but there are number commands you can program into the aftermarket universal remotes made by UEI, like One-For-all urc-3660, urc-3680, urc-7880. Or the Interset 422-3/4. These number commands aren't preset when it comes to Ultra/ Express Roku, you would have to initially enter a 5-digit code into the remote for each digit, one at a time. Once all 10 digits are mapped, they will work from there on out. In the medical field you have to rely on aftermarket devices like pacemakers and such too.  

[seasoned_geek]

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@Tivoburkee wrote:

@seasoned_geek 

Directv didn't premiere until 1994, I got it in 1995 and had for 16 years. You description about aiming the dish to get different channels sounds like the much larger C-Span dish. Where you could intercept raw news feeds and catch Dan Rather picking his nose. 

Oh no! You mushed two different topics together.

We had to turn a Wineguard antenna from the Chicago direction to the Champaign direction to get the college sports broadcasts from down there. Just a standard over-the-air

Before DirecTV; USSB existed, partnered with Hughes, had the partnership acquired by the DirecTV division.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_television_in_the_United_States

"USSB was a direct-to-home service founded in 1981. In the early 1990s they partnered with Hughes and continued operation until purchased in 1998 by DirecTV. "

Somewhere in the mid-1980s the satellite television offerings here in Illinois went from the massive 6+ foot diameter dish in the yard to a large dish resembling what DirecTV and DishNet now use. They were, if memory serves, about a foot bigger than what we have now . . . perhaps two feet bigger. The service I and my brother bought as a gift for the parents "became" DirecTV without us ever joining DirecTV.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Satellite_Broadcasting

I'm befuddled by this statement.

In the medical field you have to rely on aftermarket devices like pacemakers and such too.

Can't figure out your intent. I assume you were aiming for a point, but missed. I think it is because there is a tidbit of information you are missing. With pacemakers and defibrillators and almost all other medical devices, you are banned from using any aftermarket products with said device. All products used with any medical device, especially an implantable device, have to be formally tested to FDA regulation by the manufacturer of the device in question.

Freds Medical Devices cannot say/market their defibrillator control/monitoring device is compatible with Medtronic defibrillators unless Medtronic has formally tested the device and certified it to FDA standards.

It's a safety risk factor thing. Fred might get his unit to work with one model working in the blind, but he wouldn't be able to keep it in sync with all the firmware changes for all of the models without direct support from Medtronic. Somebody would suffer an "adverse outcome."