The Future of Physical Remotes

Around the turn of the century, two guys in Canada had an idea that maybe they could build a product that could simultaneously control your TV, your home theater, your VCR, your DVD player, and everything else in your living room And that maybe if they could get that product into your living room, All that would be just beginning From the Virgin of Oox Media this is Virion History, a show about the best and worst and strangest and most important products in tech history. I'm David Piece and today It's time for the story ofay harmony for. All right, we're back. It is time for what I think is going to be a strangely heated conversation about TV remotes. Join me in the studio, Nili Patell. Hello How many harmony remotes would you say you've owned and used over the years? Over half a dozen whichich is a lot, I mean, a lot. It's like where it lasted maybe ten years and I had over six is what I'm going to say. Also here, John Higgins, our TV and audio reviewer. you have as long a history with harmony stuff as just about anybody, it seems like. Harmony remotes were one of the first things that I reviewed back twenty plus years ago when I was at Home Theater magazine. Also, joining us remotely, Matt Rogers, CEO of Mill, the co founder of Nest back in the day, who I will just say fairly straightforwardly demanded to be on this episode. Matt show. I have a lot of opinions about this. Yeah. tellell us briefly about your harmony history I had no choice. There's nothing else out there like this. And even though this product has been gone for a long time, still user That's amazing.. Nest had a lot of Lodge tech people at it from what I recall Was that you saying I got to get some of this harmonyest Yeah, look, their product marketing team, I thought was one of the best in the business. This was kind of the Golden age Lodge deck, two thousands early twenty ten s. Also in stududio with us, we have I think three different harmony remotes, which go from a few buttons and a screen on the bottom, which is weird to a lot of buttons and a screen on the top, which is more or less the harmony story as we're about to get into. So let's dive in here because there's actually fair amount of history to get into and then we are just going to litigate the best harmony remote model for one to seven hours. So I want to go back to nineteen ninety nine, which is where our story starts. And actually, Neili, I need you to do just a tiny bit of level setting for us. for people who were not alive or paying attention or buying home feedater gear. I always nineteen ninety nine All of us could do this, I will say. But you, I'm betting of the four of us may have owned the most home feedater gear at this time. Like if I just to guess. Yeah. So a thing that was happening right around now is there's this explosion of stuff in your living room that you might be using and aating to control in some way. Can you just paint us a picture of what that ecosystem started to look like in your living room right around this time. Yeah, you know how now if you have kids and they're into sports, you buy a lot of sports gear? My parents had me. So in our living room, we had a giant Toshiba rear projection TV It was connected to a at that time, cutting edge Dolby Pro Logic to receiver. So Th these are immediately two things you need to control. thing had four inputs, like that mattered. So there was the VHS player, which was still very relevant at that time, the DVD player the CD player and of course, the tape deck The only thing that we cut out in that period of time was we set aside the record player which has now made a ferocious comeback. But so you just had this proliferation of devices. All of them came with their own IR remotes And the individual manufacturers all had their own weird proprietary control systems. So we were a pioneer family. so most of our stuff was pioneer, and you could plug headphone cable in between the receiver and the CD player And that would let you use the receiver's remote to control the CD play Good Lord. this was a total nightmare. And so you just had the coffee table with six remotes on because Sometimes what you wanted was to play a CV, and sometimes what you wanted was to play a VHS, and sometimes what you wanted was to play a tape And you had to switch inputs on the receiver You had to tell the TV what thing was going to happen because often your game console was plugged directly into the TV And then you had to control playback on whatever device. And you're just now you're five remotes. And it always had the volume with the receiver. could And you definitely wanted the volume on the receiver. Yeah. And so that remote was there for one functionalone to control the volume. and then all of your transport controls, your playback controls were usually somewhere else. And then on top of it, like if your life was like a pure kind of hell, you also had a cable box or a satellite box in that remote was just its own kind of nightmare at all times. And none of this stuff could talk to each other in any meaningful way Matt you've been nodding alone. Does this all feel about right to you? Can you best Denilizes chaos? It was an awful time. And what would happen is inevitably one of the batteries would have been taken out of one of the remotes, of which, you know, like teenage Matt would have to say like why is nothing working? It was usually someone left the batteries out. It was not a good time The reason I wanted to do this up front is because like this is such an obvious problem. with an obvious solution that everybody understands to be a better idea. What if I just had one remote to control everything? this is This starts to happen. There had been this big explosion in this market in the nineteen eighties when Sony won a lawsuit about the VCR. People start wanting to record and watch stuff in different ways. So this is just like exploding. Steve Wzniak at one point leaves Apple to go found a company doing a universal remote. Phillips was making remotes. Harman Carden was making remotes. L this was a thing that was out there. But then these two guys named Glen Harris and Justin Henry decide that they want to make their own. They get super annoyed at all these remotes and decide to make something better. And they create a company. And this is the first product ends up with this name and this is a true test of your harmony and knowledge It was not called the harmony. any of you remember what it was called This is the Easy apper. It my dad. Good work. G back. So they they they start a company called Easy Zapper. and this is this is the thing that they want to do They eventually changed their company name to intrigue technologies which I would argue was like vastly worse than Ey Zapper. That's a real toss up. So they decideed to start building a remote. actually In a certain way, this is an easy problem and in a certain way, this is a very hard problem Because all the stuff you just described Nili is like fundamentally Everything about this that makes people think it's an easy problem is why it's a hard problem. Explain. It is a super hard problem where no one publishes respects. No one publishes respects. All of them use different IR codes, that IR codes conflict. And Matt, I'm curious if this is your read on it is the actual technologist here There's no feedback loop to validate that you've done the right thing except the dumb person sitting there holding the remote who has no idea what's going on Yeah, this is wild. like this is an era before Bluetooth Uh yeah, for the kids at home Back in the day, as grandparents, the way our devices would communicate is they would blast light to each other, but light you could not see. And it was very bad technology. V very slow. we had V veryy unreliable. Yeah. There was a little light bulb like a little LED at the tip of the remote and you would push a button and it would flash in a sequence that would indicate volume up. It's in all these remotes today. There's just more Bluetooth in the world, but you would hold the two remotes and whatever universal remote, including the harmonies, had a sensor in them. So the fallback if the codes online didn't work was you would put it in like a learn mode and you would hold the volume up on your mounte. And it would watch the flashes and learn the code for volume up So it's essentially just like doing moreorse code with light in or c. It's doingorse code light. Exactly. To your point like the devices didn't know if it worked or not. there was no, like codes. there was no acknowledgement. It was just like sending your Morsecout out into the Eetthern you got there. So everything about it that makes it seem easy, I just have to clone this set of IR codes is actually why it's impossibly hard and everyone who's ever tried it has failed in some kind of comical disaster Yes. So that's actually a Perfect description of problem that they set out to solve And one of the biggest problems is How do we know what's happening with any of your devices? And this ends up being like a foundational piece of the technology that they build is they actually patent a system that allows the remote to store information about the state of your other devices. So it rather than just does it. Again, does it work? Who? I think what I'm did they get a patent for it? Hell yeah. I think what I can preview for the audience here is Matt and I feel very differently if there aren anys. I can't tell you how many hours have been spent. on getting this thing, right? or even Like the timing is like, you know, adding delay between commands. M. It's a lot. It's tough. So they set out there's also this thing happening, right? There's the personal computer revolution is happening. Lots of people are getting computers, lotots of people are getting access to the internet. So they decide like, oh, one way we can solve a whole bunch of this problem is to take these systems for controlling all of these different devices and rather than make you program each individual one yourself or just press a button and hope and pray something good happens We can let you sort of build these systems for yourself. And I just want to read you a line This is from a Washington Post story at the time And I want to point out this is describing a good idea that works well This is how they describe it. Inead of adding control codes for new gear through sequential button pushing on the remote, you can use a more or less friendly computer interface then transfer the new smarts to the remote with a serial cable. These come with control codes store on board, so you don't need a computer to start using them Once you're done downloing or editing new control codes, you can then rearrange the ons screen buttons on these remote backladed touch sensitive PDA style displays. This is the Absolute state of the art remote technology. Simple. Yeah You simple They they I think knew, it seems like the very beginning that they're building like an absolute power user system here, right? Like this is not for the faint of heart Right. And at the time, John, you were like, you were in this space early on. They were not likeike a bunch of other EZ takes it this. There doesn't seem to have been a way to do this that was easy. No, none of them were easy. Yeah. All of them were designed for people that at least thought they knew what they were doing. Yeah So again, this is the team calls it smart state technology. perfect. And again, did it work? Who's to say? But what was it a thing that they patented and made a big deal out of We have one of the first remotes that they made, I think not the first one, but one of the first ones here in the studio with us And it is just one of the most bizarre remotes you will ever see. becausecause there is a screen on the bottom of it. This is the most upside down remote I've ever seen about it. I walked into the studio and constantly said, That's upside down. and it absolutely is. sure is. So the screen is at the bottom Then there's the numb pad zone, which has arrows around the eight which makes no sense because the eight itself is not directional. The buttonons under the arrows. L the five has an up arrow under it, but the five is up. That makes no sense. Then you've got a button labeled Zap Unclear what that does. Oh, I got answers for that one. Then you've got, you know, mute recall. Th then youve got your transport controls at the top. Again, the play button has directional arrows around it but it's not directional. So this makes no sense. And at the very top you have the red IR window, any human being would look at this and think it was upside down. Even the way the mold lines and the plastic are oriented make you think it's upside down. There's no way this thing is an upside down. It's more comfortable. It's more They too an existing remote and they just printed all the buttons upside down. It naturally puts your hand further forward whichich means you can't get to the number pad. It's very good. This one we have is not the very first one I can show you a picture of the very first one, which is an incredibly simplified version of the same thing So you can see it has it has two easy Zapper logos on it, which I appreciate By the time they started selling them, they were calling them harmony remotes. They seemed to really chicken out on Ey Zapper as a name Yeah progressively over time as a company. They left the Zap butt. But they did. So would you like to talk about zaps I would love to. So one of the things that this remote could do. And I want to underscore the ambition behind Harmony and Easy Zapper and all of the things that this was supposed to be. This is not just supposed to be a universal remote for all of your stuff. This had such enormous dreams for what it might be. So the very first thing it could do is it had this screen down at the bottom And when you connected it to the interternet, by which they meant literally plug it into a wire in yourC into your PC, it could download program listings for your TV onto your like ono the four line screen. on the remote. And you could actually scroll through the TV guide on your remote press something and have it basically deep link you right to the thing that you wanted to watch. So it's like a little tiny TV guide on your remote. and that was what it was called Zapping programs. But again, this is only the very beginning. had They had this idea and remember, this is like nineteen ninety nine two thousand two thousand one. They had this idea that maybe if you're watching a cooking show, you should be able to press a button on your remote and immediately be taken to a webpage containing the recipe for the thing that they're making. Or maybe you should be able to This is the area of Tibo, right? Like this is like I think we all forget about what was going on in the world this time. Like this was a really important feature Like we had just started having the ability to like record shows at our houses Like ye, everything was appointment viewing back in the day. Web TV was everywhere Yeah, this is a different era. Yeah. Well, this is like there is this term the digital living room that is that is such a thing at this moment and kind of forever. right? Like everyone has always tried to figure out how do we put technology in your hands while you sit on your couch. How do we access you while you're watching TV? is like a huge. Everybody understands how much money there is it. This becomes a big part of the Alexa pitch. You can go watch a show on Amazon now and all it does is give you links to buy the things in the show This is what Google ends up being up to with Google TV. There is this idea that if we can just put an interternet connected device within reach while you sit on your couch, something will happen. No, it's not something. We all know what it is.' make buy something. Right. By the way, this idea that there will be these feedback loops to your TV It's I mean, it's going to come up over and over again in this story You're watching something on TV and you want to close the loop and buy the shirt that Rachel is wearing on friends. How are we gonna to close that loop? How are we going to detect that shirt and then give you a buy button And the answer the time as Matt is pointing out is like, we're going to put a computer on the TV And it's going to run MSN. And it's like, why why are you doing that? don't do that. And this the whole industry chased this dream forever And on the other end is you're going to hold a device in your hand that has no idea what's going on the TV. And that's going to control everything. And you can see even to this day, the feedback loops are not perfectly closed. Like it is it is the dream of the industry I mean, this is also a moment in time before Facebook, before YouTube, where most of advertising dollars were putting things on TV Yeah TV advertising was all the money in marketing. So you think about like Yeah know, in the spirit of building startups, like chasing where the money is, like That is where the money was then. Yeah. And again, this is like the early internet days when there's a real sort of internet one point zero belief that maybe one of the most important computers you own will be your television. Like you might have a computer on your desk or whatever, but maybe you'll come home and you'll do a computer on your TV Um pan out. But it was this is the thing they're trying to do and and The easy apper idea. is maybe We can be the literal remote for that. that this can be the way that you watch television and the way that you buy things. So even in their press release launching this thing, and again, this is what zapping is. that you're zapping things to and from the internet which I think is a cool phrase that we should bring back. says it says with this feature, Zaps, you can buy a music video, link to new sports equipment, or lift a recipe from your favorite cooking show. You will never have to do a web search for something you saw on TV again Well, then What an idea. So again, this is like they very much are thinking about this as more than just a way to control all of your stuff But they have to control all of your stuff in order for this to work Like Matt, you have a long history in smart homeome stuff. and I just want to know your read on this as a smart home guy because like in a very real way, this is not a TV product, this is a smart home product It really five years ago, is there is there something to this? Oh absolutely againg, also mean this is an era in history where The other side of kind of smart homeome was extremely high end custom integration wealthy people spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to have these control boxes that allowed them to change the channel and have all their systems work with one remote. The era of Krestron, for example custom integrators So this idea that that everybody could get that technology and control all of their home theater with one thing is I mean, it's kind of a bold statement at the time. John, do you remember in these early days, like you were covering this stuff from the TV side? Did this actually have legs at the time? did you think? Yeah, absolutely. Because it was, as Matt just said, they were trying to cater to the people that wanted the control for the Caurant systems and have them be more accessible in their homes that they could do. They didn't have to pay somebody to come in and set up their TV, their curtains. They light I just wanted to take a pause here and point out that the smart home integrator market is bigger and more lucrative than ever because this problem is not been solved. Re I'm sorry I'm sorry. I I tried tried. I tried. I'm just saying like Crestaurant didn't go anywhere. They They just got bigger So yeah, so in addition to all of this, it goes about trying to find smart ways to control all of the stuff in your house. and it winds up with this system that sort of fails gracefully by design, but I think in most practical cases, fails sort of spectacularly, which is that on the one hand, you can go and download the various control systems for various devices. And so someomebody would do the learn mode thing and say like this is how you controll this Toshiba receiver. They would upload it to the Harmony website and then you could go and download it and then you would already have all the controls baked into your remote. So it ends up being this sort of crowd sourced problem, which as far as I understand, winds up being really good and useful because this is like how The harmony remote woundess up having more compatibility than anything else because my assumption would be I didn't have nearly as much cool hk theatater equipment as you guys did. But in those days, if you have a remote solves. half of your living room problem, but not the other half. you've kind of solved no problems. Yeah. Like if I'm going from six remotes to four, I've spent a bunch of money for no reason. And this seems to be one of the like main issues with a lot of the universal remotes at the time, right? Yeah, absolutely. So the Harmony gets way ahead of this by basically letting people solve this problem for themselves and share it with each other, which I think is very cool. And then it comes down to Uh I would say smartly trying to guess what you're doing. When you press the volume button, for instance, it would actually try to guessess based on what you had done recently, which device you might be trying to control. This is where this all falls Yes. and then from there, it just goes straight down to just point at things in hope. What I wonder is like, Was this just a completely unsolvable problem in that sense? Like how could you There's some stuff you know. So like as John pointed out, you almost always want volume to happen on the receiver So they would just hard map the volume buttons, the receiver and that's that thenen there's as the product line got more and more complicated and more and more developed over time They developed what can only be described as macros So you'd push, watch TV and it would just issue sequences of IR commands. As Matt was saying, like they would adjust the timing. So it's like you turn on the receiver and then the receiver would take a second to boot up. and then at the right instant, it would send the input code to the receiver. If you send it too early or too late you wouldd miss the window because receiver is on to whatever next thing it was doing. And then you also got to turn the TV on and make sure this happens. like Watch a movie if you just imagine yourself as a person doing it with six remotes. You're going to pick up the receiver remote turn on the power, the TV remote, turn on the power DVD right, you're going to do all that stuff with your hands. The harmony is like That's a sequence we can automate. It's a macro. We'll just issue all those commands with like little time delays to make sure it works The problem, as we've been pointing out over and over again, is it has no idea if any of these things happen So then you end up with this remote that's perfectly programmed for maybe nothing being in the right state. Yeah, it was right maybe eighty percent of the time. It was like, you know you'd spend all this time to program it and get it right. and then Yeah, obviously these are a lot of analog systems too. So timing may be variable timing changes or And then you have to reprogram all over again. I used to tell my wife this all time. She's like, how come the TV's not turning on? I'm like h the hit the off button. it'll go off and start over again. Start over again. It was the key move. And the weird dynamic here one is the software was horrible Particularly if you were a Mac user, the Logitech software to program these remotes was just garbage. I believe it was made in like Macromedia director. Like it wasn't even like a Mac app. It was like a fake app that would go talk to the web in like weird ways and like totally crap. like none of this was good. Like Eventually Steve Jobs was like, I'm not gonna to have flash in the iPhone. and I think it's becauseuse he tried to program a harmy remote. Like it was that level of bad, right? So you'd end up in this weird and it was wizard based. So even if like you're like, I know what to fix, I just need to go fix it. It be like it looks like you're trying to program your remote. and you're like, I hate you. Like get out of my way. I just need to change this one button. So this is a nightmare And then there's this huge boy do I have a lot of feelings about this around Then there's this huge gap in what's actually happening here whichich is the biggest nerd in the family has a toy. And they have bought the toy and they have fought through Macromedia director to program the toy. And then when they're done screwing with the toy, everyone else in the house is compelled to use the toy And the toy is brittle in ways that delight the nerd and absolutely frustrate everyone else. And no one has the just the straight up honesty to admit that they have become a underpaid systems administrator for a piece of junk. They're like, I can fix it and like You're just off to the races because the primary user of all that automation does not care about any of this. R one second and you as the big nerd are totally fine dealing with six remotes. Right This is like the famous babysitter test, right? Like Can a person who has no experience with your system come and sit down and use it? And I feel like in theory, Universal remotes are supposed to be the solution to that problem, right? Instead of a tray of remotes in front of you, here's the one that you use for everything. I cannot believe how many how did the babysitter would be texting me saying I can't figure out to. this was my house, literally. Yeah. So Matt, you have you're still using anything. You have a much more positive view of this Wh do the pitch There's literally no choice. like this is the problem. It's like literally no other option because I refuse to give Crestron one hundred thousand dollars to fix this problem And we'll get to it the ebbs and flows of the harmony business over the years like there's still nothing else like it out there. So actually this is a good moment. Let's take a quick break and then we're going to get into it. and then the fate of harmony changes very quickly We're going to get into that. We'll be right back All right, we're back. The Harmony ships in two thousand one It costs two hundred and ninety nine Canadian dollars one hundred and ninety nine US dollars, which I would argue is a pretty solid price as Universal Remotes go. It held that price a little while. He did for a long time. Yeah. And then in two thousand four, Logitech buys Intrigue technologies Nay Ey Zapper for twenty nine million dollars in cash plus performance based bonuses pretty good deal. Yeah. And this in this deal, Logitech is very clear that it wants the full vision of the thing. It's not just a controller for your television. They want this digital living room thing. They want the big ideas about what they're up to. And Neili, I have a sentence that is going to make you feel so many feelings. And I would like everyone to react to this sentence. This is from Guarino Deluca, who was the largest exEO at the time He said, and I quote, We see the remote control as the mouse of the digital house He I believe he said that earnestly and with a straight face. John, how does that make you feel? Um I don't know, a little dirty, maybe. Never rhyme in like. It's just like what is this? Oh God. The mouse of the digital house. Gard D Luca has he has like a bunch of these. L he's a character in the industry at this. Well, very much so. And Logitech is also like K kind of on top of the world.. This companany is making very good stuff. The other phrase they use a lot is they like last inch devices. They make a lot of mice in keyboards and it's like They talk about, you know, last mile with no delivery stuff. He' that's the last inch. Nope. We used to call those accessories when we. What one is that? That's great. My computer is an accessory to my keyboard, Matt. The mouse for your digital house really It really misses on where the computer of your digital house will be This is this is a vision that's like youper a computer somewhere. So this is a fascinating thing because this is two thousand four, right? So this is before the iPhone, this is before. Smartphones even are ubiquitous everywhere, but like we're deep in like the bllackberry age by now. We're doing phones with internet access. It's already clear to some people who are paying attention that we are starting to move into a new kind of device with a new kind of powers. And they're here being like, it's the remote control. And so this is I just want to pause it this moment And ask in two thousand four, was should larger tech have bought this company for this giant vision of what it was going to do for the home. Or was it already parking up the wrong tree U, I think I think they got sold the dream Yeah, I think look again, knowing how the accessory business works. like you sell these very high margin accessories, they're probably, you know fifty, sixty percent margin on these things, but they were they're chasing this dream of, you know, can we be a services business? Could we be an advertising business? You know, Tivo had gone public a few years earlier Web TV, wh gotop by Microsoft at a gazillion dollars So they're probably looking at that as say, hey like we need to get a piece of that market too. Yeah. And owning and controlling the user interface is always where the power is, right? Yeah. So all those things came with remotes. but if you for like my remote will have a screen on it and control all that stuff because you can't stop me because it's all I are. Sure. could you can get there, thenen there's whatever other automations that you might wish to link to your harmony, and you're like, we're going to sell this out of the box control system to consumers and that's going to be big That said, if you are looking at the things people are buying that computerize their house at that time, manan, you run right into the fact that the TivVo remote is really good. rightight? Like it is just a really good remote that people love It's not the best selling D VVR, but that's the high watermark for remotes. It was far more ergonomic than any of these harmonies ever turned out to be. Then you run into the fact that actually a real problem is the cable company is shipping universal remotes all their cable boxes because they know that their customers, they just need the TV to turn on and the volume to go up and down And they can solve that problem with a very cheap universal remote that Everyone remembers like plastic grreay bubble remote This is your this is your real competition. You gott to do better than that. It is surprisingly hard to do better than free plastic bubble remote for ninety percent of people.. The one that comes with my cable box is pretty much good. And that thing defeated Tivo. Like just we did the Tivo episode and that thing just defeated Tivo. Yeah. So I think they they bought into a vision. There's certainly a market I think what they truly missed is that eventually the computer would end up inside the TV. And then the TV's remote would do everything And because the interface is actually going to be on television And I don't think anybody saw that happening at the rate at which it happened. But the TV going from dumb to smart Like the second that happened, the harmony was done John, are there any glimmers of this happening in the TV industry yet? Like at this moment What's going on in TV Wor two thousand four No, I mean, we're still staunchly dumb TV area. And the remotes that are coming with those TV's for the most part, aren't behaving well withers. o. So most people still have this real need Yeah, I believe so. At that point, there was still the dream of wanting to be able to control everything at once with one remote. You definitely two boxes. You had a cable box and some sort of VHD or DVD play. Like at the very least you need to three things. Right? Like that was a pretty standard setup for most people. One of the fascinating personal revelations of preparing for this episode has been My family had Just like a giant ass CRT TV with rabbit ears and nothing else for way longer than is like cool or appropriate We gotable for the first time in two thousand seven and it was like life changing. Yeah look this was a it was again, it was a real problem back then. especially if you had game consoles, stereo, these things really M, you know, made this. So complicated. But the the core problem here is like There's not a real business selling remotes. I think this is why they had to sell the drink. Yeah we could do more than just be a remote company. because the remote business is not a good business. Yeah. No, I think that's right. So but Logch buys this company and I would say pretty immediately we enter what you would call the golden age of the Harmony remote. This remote in front of us, the Harmony eight hundred eighty comes out in two thousand five, a year later. They just turn around and ship this thing time And there are people Wh would argue this is the best harmony remote This is, I would say the canonical harmony mode.. This is the one most people remember as the harmonyer mode. They've oriented it correctly.reens at the top The screen is at the top, it is reasonably eronomic. it's got the trigger fingers the bottom here so you can really You can really zap with abandon. Great Depad. and then The screen here shows macros and the control buttons are on the side. So you're like, watch TV, and you push this button and Things happen Yeah, this is, I think when prettyt much every harmony remote after this. looks like this in some sort of big structural way. And this just becomes the look of harmy remotes. This also By the way, the fundamental error of this remote as cool as it is, just try at a glance to identify where the volume buttons are I found them. Yeah. That took a long time. They're hidden on the side as part of like a design element and the plus button is in a monumentally stupid decision smaller than the minus button. I could not tell you why that is. It's also really hard to use the dark Yeah know, likeike if you're like watching a movie, like It's just it's it was hard Yeah was really, ye they didn't, they didn't nail that But it did come with this killer charging dock, which is very cool So from here, the story sort of speeds ahead U until about twenty thirteen when stuff starts to get wacky. But I would just like to give all of you an opportunity. This is now is the moment that if you have deep and abiding love for a particular harmony remote I would like you to profess it right now before the whole thing starts to fall apart, and it does so very, very, very, very, very quickly. John, now is your time. Harmy one It felt great in my hand. Actuallym going I'm going to pause for a minute because I feel emotional. I definitely have some rose colored glasses on. Okay. because as I'm starting to think about the touchs screen where it broke it up and there were like four buttons you could fit on each screen. I was about to say it's great. You could hit your watch TV or play games. It was very inaccurate in my E resistive, right? A little bit. And I can't say the number of times that I went to hit. Maybe it's the size of my hands I went to hit watch TV play games was what my thumb hit instad. I remember a lot of those those touchscreens in general when it was like, you actually have to press a half inch to the right of the thing that you're trying to press because that's the way the sensors work. The Harmony onene is the other one that when we told people were doing this episode, the two we got the most feedback on were the eight eighty, which a lot of people had for a very long time and had really great feelings about and the Harmony one, which a bunch of people sent me like Borderline rude emails about how much they loved the Harmony one. Like that thing just has a special place in people's technological history. I still have friendriends, other reviewers, TV reviewers that are still using their harmony ones or or lament the fact that they don't have their harmony ones anymore. I mean, think I have my harmony one somewhere? Wow. I found my Harmony hub, which was basically your IR hub that you had, which was awful Um because it would always for whatever reason the it would move andice sl and then it couldn't see your stereo Yeah. It was beats the purpose. Absolutely wor. So then you're getting up off your couch to move, you're not getting up off your couch to actually use your devices. You're getting up to move the Harmony hub a little further forward to then go sit back down on your couch and not have your remote work properly. Okay, so I looked it up. The Harmony one indeed had a two point two inch resistive touchscreen, which meant that when you pushed it, the top layer of the screen had to contact This is why it was inaccurate. R. And so this was at the time There was a big fight in smartphone world about capassive multi touch screens like they had on the iPhone and resistive screens, which in particular Nokia insisted was better for Finland because it was cold outside and people wore gloves. And I can't tell you and Gadget as Gadget bloggers just the religious wars we would have in our comments about resistive versus capacitive touchscreens And we would just be like, no, they're resisted one scutch because they're always inaccurate. Y. I think it's safe to say that argument was well in oneon by capacitity touchscreens. Yeah, I don't think that was. Are you still seeing a lot of resistive touchscreens out there in your line of work? Not in. They're gone Yeah. ye Yeah. And the other piece, the IR hub It's just like a doom technology. Like I can't so much of harmony is like a huge bet on IR all the way to. We need to make a breakout box. And communicate with it. I think the Harmony one is like Bluetooth to the breakup. Like this made no sense. Yeah. well, and it got wackier and wackier over time because like this is also a phase of unbelievable like technological expansion, right? Yeah. Smartphones come out, we start doing some sort of proto smart home things. Matt, you're working on Nest and working with things like ZigBe and Z Wave and working on thread. Logistic eventually tries to incorporate all of this into in many cases, very old remotes and they do it by just selling you more and more geitar.. So they have extenders, they have a hub that you can put stuff in. they are like I think in a sort of earnest and good way, desperately trying to continue to be a universal remote. Yes, when the whole idea of a universal remote is just exploding in front of their faces. Yeah It's turning into a smartphone. Yeah. So my favorite remote I'll just say because I think Mat's holding it is the nine hundred. which is the in my view, the platonic ideal you could see why I use it for so many years. Like I got my Android TV macro, I got my Apple TV macro, my Sonos macro, my Blu ray macro, my mini PC macro. you couldn't do this any other way. You finally achieved convergence. You put a TV under your PC under your TV. And this one, if I have my timing correct, this one comes out well into the we should be doing more stuff on screens, Eera. Like that remote you're holding is much more screen than some of the older harmon. Yeah they did a they you know, it even has some macros for like turning the lights on and off And this is around the era where Harmony was actually a works with Nest partner. likeike they Oh nice. They wanted to go all the way. Yeah. Yeah. they really did. And I think I think ran into the question of Do we need a universal remote for anything want to come back to that question. But I also want to point out to harmony's credit, all of this is very complicated. There's a lot going on. The things don't work all the time, and yet they are by a country mile. best product for this thing for a very long time. Well, we have to remember, we' talking about the one and the nine hundred. This is the top of the range Yeah the Harmony seven hundreds and the six hundreds Yeah, which are just straightforward IR based universal remotes that don't even have PC features. They're the sellers. Yes And even those, like I went back and I was reading old like wirecutter recommendations of them and it's literally just like, oh, you want the best one, buy a harmony. You want the expensive one, buy the more expensive harmony? The Best budget option, buy the cheaper harmony. Like John, did no one ever catch up to this? How did no one ever catch up to this? Well, why would you? I' very I mean, I think other companies probably Saw the writing on the wall and that this isn't a good direction to go in twenty twelve. Right. And but if you're logicch you're completely f're it at this point. mean, if you look at these remotes, if you look at the nine hundred Mat Hz the picture that won It's just turning into a smartphone That's the thing that's happening to this device. You're like, Ohh, we should put a touchcreen on it. Oh, we should link it up with a bunch of external radios to control your smart home Oh, it should have some computeer in. Oh, it has an internet service. It's like So it's an iPhone I think it was okay Yeah, it's like Apple plus Homekit just basically solves this. Well does it exactly. That sounds like another episode. Yeah, aggreed. So okay, so we keep going and then in twenty eighteen Logitech basically starts to just tear the thing down. They turn off the harmony link that made a lot of this stuff work You can still do some of the basic IR stuff, but All of the sort of advanced ideas at this point are gone And then Brack and Darrel, who is at that point the CEO, comes on your podcast, Neili Patel, and I would say kind of just puts a knife through the hole. Very casually. This is a series of Lodge tech CEO showing up in D Coder and just stepping in it. It's It's a long standing tradition. that's what we do. But yeah, he was like, yeah,t Why would we make our remotes? That seems dumb. I have a clip where he describes it and this traveled in a big way, and this was when a lot of people went, oh, this thing is dead. let me play it. You have the market leader in that space in harmony yourotes O Earth is going on with H harmon eares Well, you know, harmony is a phenomenal product, as you know if you want to really simplify a complex living room stack of stuff get it down to a single remote and really simplify it That is what it's that's what it was originally conceptualized for and it does that better than I think anything else. And we like that it does that Now now the future world is changing. It's really, you know, as you know, more and more is going through the internet, you know, you're you're you're getting in a way It's just as complex, but now you've got all these different streaming services and which are exciting, you know, but you're getting more and more all time It's so much of it say it Rack I mean directly you, directly through the interternet and it's moved on. So I think I think harmony has a place to play in that, but I also think we are not focused on trying to figure out how harmony can solve all that that problem beyond that. I think that's probably the domain of other people. I mean, there it is.'s that's the knife through harmony. Boy, did he not want to say what he said? No. And then he said it anyway and I think there was like a walk backack Yeah, they tried to pretend that they were still very committed to it. He also said to you on that show that the remote business for Logitech was about six percent the size of Logitech's keyboard business. It was very clear that it was just like we know that people have these and like them We don't really care. We're not investing in them anymore.acking no longer to see of logicch. Too small of a business. doesnes't make sense. And look, this is probably why there were no big competitors either Yeah know, like markarket is shrinking. it just Yeah, it doesn't make sense anymore for any. Although I will say ironically, he identifies another problem in that clip, which is that it's really hard to find stuff to watch. which is correct and true. and like all the way back to the what if we could zap program guides to your remote is like No one has solved this problem, but he literally says to you that's somebody else's problem.ounds like Netflix's problem. Yeah. Every episode in this smart homeome series of Version history boils down to where's the computer in your house going be? And the answer is in the TV. Like it's just for this problem, the answer is your TV is going to have an arm chip in some variant of Linux, And it's going to run apps. and it's actually just a giant tablet And that's going to have a computer in it and maybe you can control your voice or maybe you can control it with whatever weird remote Viso is going to dream up at this time. And boy did they have a bunch of weird ideas this time? But the idea of an IR based controller Talking to multiple devices because your content is in multiple places was just dwindling. And then, you know, the buttons for lights and shades, that market had not even begun to be even a glimmer of what it is today So now you're like selling a even smaller number of people a solution that they probably don't even want. I get why he's saying it But at the same time There what because there's no competitor I mean, it literally was they just unplugged the service from a lot of people Yeah. and they just called it and walked away. And I think a lot of people are still furious about it This is this is actually kind of my last question on this front is why people are so furious about it. Like even I am the least experienced with Harmony remotes of anybody on this episode. None of you have made any of these products sound any good and like anyone should have ever liked them. And yet they had this incredibly dedicated of users who loved them and have moved heaven and earth to continue to use them John why Make this make sense to me Oh, we want things to work out. Okay We want them to be a commism human beings. Maybe. We want all of our things to work together. It's why HDMI interterconnect. We still want it to work properly. There's a A home theater dream that was born in the eighties where we want all of our things to talk together and we want them all to work properly together. Yeah. And I just think there was a lot of people that you know,, Matt, you brought up. it was You know, eighty percent of the time it worked. But that eighty percent felt great. It's because you've accomplished something. you like I have I have orchestrated your mition. Yeah. All of these things that shouldn't talk together talked and started up in the order that you told them to And that one time will drive you through the next six times that it doesn't work. I how you've been like it's the goulf of technology. It's basically what the case once in a while, you pure it. That's gorgeous. Y. Matt, what are youre I mean, you're still using one. What you like billing products at Apple that destroy this thing It's your fault that these don't exist anymore. Why do you still use them No choice. You know My harmony has broken And I will go on eBay and buy someone's used model that is the same model. so my macros can all transfer over. because their serv is down. because literally I have no choice like look if I went the kind of all in on the smart TV route, I think I think this would be a solved problem for me. But I'm still holding ono this home theater dream of having a fancy stereo system, having my Playstation, my Xbox, and having them kind of all work with one button. Maybe I need to give up the dream. No hold on to it, Matt. So this is important. And I think this is real for a lot of people. So I described my setup when I was a teenager at my parent' house in Wisconsin. I set up now When I have children is there's a TV, there's a receiver. There is an Apple TV, there's a kaidescape which John Eb isreing with. Nice. There's a switch and there's a PS five. This is a lot of devices Yeah. all that need to be routed, input switched. eighty percent of the time HDMICEC works Mm. That that's the trick. is that And it works. It's like just good enough for me to be like I can mostly just have the Apple TV remote and the game controllers out And I can I can get Pretty much this is gonna to work. But then there's a box sitting on the coffee table with the receiver and the TV remote in it because when it doesn't work, you got to You' gota turn things off. I still There's no otherate of instructions for the babysitter That's fad It should. I mean, because of those that twenty percent, when it doesn't work, okay, well, this remote will help you do this and this remote will help you do that. If the TV remote doesn't do it. So the worst failure mode in our house is because it's a Sony TVS that runs Android. And so what you I swear to God this is true. If nothing else works You can just tell Google Assistant to turn off the TV And it it's like you're praying to heaven. like, just turn off the TV. like somehow that will always work. I don't know why, but that's the one. if all the remotes give up, that's the one that works. That's really funny. And that's really the direction we're going, right? We're not're screaming to heaven. screaming to heaven brain. But the remotes are going away The whole idea is that you use your voice to do all of this stuff. Right. And this is this is sort of the train that moves through this industry, right? because it it's we get the voice assistantance, we get smartphones, we get the sort of ambient like Alexa computing stuff. We get smart TVs that build this stuff in. There's just If your goal is to turn on your television, you now have sort of infinite ways to do that. And what happens when Logitech gets out of this game is it just the game dies. There are essentially at this point, zero good universal remotes There are a few companies that try after. Neila and I both got very excited about a company called Cavo for like ten minutes. That was a thing, but no one no one has stepped in or even really tried. And can I explain the Cavo thing for one second second. So Cavo This is pre AI boom They solution to the problem of not knowing what was happening on the TV was that you would plug all of your devices into their device And it would use computer vision. to click around the Apple TB interface for you And this was very slow and very clunky and it sort of worked but didn't work And they totally pivoted to being a totally different kind of business because theyd put a bunch of hardware in a bunch TVs They were like, how do we close the feedback loop We're gonna literally watch the Apple TV. And none of this was ready at the time. This is like years and years ago. None of this was ready at the time. But this is the level of like solutioning they had to do to use the TV for you. Then they ran into the immediate problem of people are buying smart TVs,' using the absolence smart TVs and we can't see them O our business is dead It was like the last gasp of the universal remote multiple sources idea. And then they're like, yeah, we don't veryone's just using ties in now we're dead. Theory AI bless, AI agents Theory Aentic AI is the IR Laser of twenty twenty six. I'm. I mean I'm holding out hope that U, I still get this like universal smmart homeome app with Aena GI Well our universal remote days are dead, but like at least maybe we'll get an app to rule them all one day. So this is actually Matt, you have to leave us here in a minute, but this is actually my last question for you, which is there's a world in which you are sort of living in unsolved problem, right? And you've the best thing that you have found is this harmony setup for what you have If somebody softwared their way out of this and built you the app you're describing on your phone, does that completely solve your problem? orr is there something about the hardware of this thing that actually is meaningful in your setup still I think we still need something in the home. you know, Eespecially for like legacy stereo systems There's no way to solve the IR problem. This is You're gonna build a robotic button that pushes the buttons, maybe. But then again, you still have the same issue. likeike, Do do you know you hit the button? Is it actually on It's this is it's tough. Like there's a reason why this is like one of these unsolved problems with like a rabid loyal following because St still don't have a solion out there. There's no solution, but also it's the kiss of death. Dude, when the Xbox one came out and they're like, here's what're gonna do. We're gonna intgrate your cable boox, and we're gonna to have these weird long IR blasters with the little cords and the bubbles, everyone got mad at me because all the this products is doomed Like I don't even need read past the spec. Like I saw IHR Blaster and weird long bubble repeaters. what are you doing? Yeah. And it was the same exact idea as a web TV, which is also Microsoft product, which is I'm gonna to horsepower a Windows PC under your TV, but I don't have access to your actual TV. So I have to control your cable box in some way And it's not going to work because I'm putting an overlay just I can talk about this forever. This basing your vision around IR because it's the last universal standard for control means you're dead. And I'm not saying this is a problem in twenty twenty six. suspect there are a lot of start upps out there being like, we're going to do aireblasting. But there was a minute when everyone was like, we're gonna figure it out. But we also didn't have a choice. I mean, it's not like our EZy Zapper friends missed some new technology that was sitting there available to them. It wasn't like Matt still can't control his stereo with anything other than IR. Like this is just this is maybe a problem without an elegant solution Everybody understands what the answer ought to be and it might be as it turns out Fundamentally an unsolvable problem. Gotta get up and push the button Yeah, but for your vintage stereo matter, you got you gott to be in the moment, you know? There's there's other audio components that you can control remotely. You know, Like you should go go put the this is why the vinyl has made it come back in my household. I was never trying to logic harmony the record player But the robot arm will do it for you. We should do an whole hpos set of the robot arm. We should. All right, Matt, we need to take a break and you need to go, but before we do Harmony remotes, Vversion History Hall of Fame, Yay, or Nay. what do you think Now' your chance to vote I'm an A Okay, wow. The last Jeda, I know. This is wow. T might be the true end of the harmony Rark. All right, We're gonna take a break and then we're gonna. We're gonna to do the eight version history questions. Matt, Thankk you so much for joining us. This has been super fun. Thanks for having me. We'll be back All right, we're back. It's time now for the eight version History questions, the question we ask to determine the legacy of every product. The first question is where Does the Harmony remote fit on the time matrix. And the time matrix, everybody's favorite concept makes perfect sense. It charts idea versus time. Was it the right idea at the right time? Was it the wr idea at the wrong time or somewhere in between? I actually think the harmony is an unusually fascinating version of this because I could argue into any one of these quadrants Well, which harmony U Let's start at the beginning We can even go with the very first one if you'd like to My argument would be actually we should pick the eight hundred eighty because I realize this episode breaks all of your rules. It does. I'm fine with it. Mo on. Okay. We're doing fine. Becauseuse usually you force me to talk about one product. We did hoverboards as a concept too, and it's like, we're never gonna to do another harmony episode. So it's fun. We're doing the whole thing this time. For this one, I would say Like I'll let you choose if you'd like to, but it's either we're eer going to do the first one Or we're going to do the eight hundred eighty, which is again, these sort of canonical harmony remote in a lot of people's ms Do you think that changes things Yes, ye. Re Yeah. John, you go first, whereere would you put it on this on this square? So for to go let's do with the eight eighty c it's right there Um Do you think it was the right time I think it was a misguided idea. See would be a wrong idea I would time. thinkink Yeahah Yeah. I think Why do you think it's the right time U becausecause there wasn't anything else that was accomplishing it S. It was the right time for the type of product. I don't know if the type of product necessarily needed to exist Interesting. That's a good way of looking at it. It was like they tried to solve the right problem. Wong. Yeah. I would say I am squarely at wrong idea wrong time, no matter what. Like I think there is a case to be made in those early days that the timing was right, But even then it's like This thing is just running into all of the things that will obviate it almost immediately. Like ironically, I think Steve Wzniak had the right time. In nineteen eighty nine, my guy tried to ship a universal remote and I think that if he had not made such a weird one, might have had a chance to last a long time. This thing is just immmediately shipping into a world that doesn't need it anymore Mbe I don't know M maybe' the one. It's like my version of this It has a fourth dimension Of course it does. Do you know what I mean? Like it just becomes increasingly more the wrong time over time. Okay. Do you know what I mean? Like it starts kind of edging at like right idea right time And then like as the years pass by. Oh, it definitely. And so like over the course of ten years, it just spirals into the bottom corner and like explodes into flames. So it seems to me like we all agree it belongs on the wrong idea side of the spectrum Because as happy as it makes all of us, it couldn't and maybe wasn't ever going to. do the thing it aspired to do But some people loved it. I don't know how to account for that. This is the problem Like there it had such w the fourth dimension wrong things That's true. That's true. Why do not fall into those simple categories. Yeah. And what you were saying about the sort of magic of solving the problem, I do think there is something underrated in this story about just the nerd project of it all. Oh, one hundred percent There is just like, you know you're sitting in front of your computer attaching a remote by a thin cable. Yeah. And that is both p ass and h as hell all at the same time. It is It is. I mean for sick individuals, it absolutely. Yeah, if they had just gotten away from the macromedia wizard interface, it would have been even more fun. Yeah. But that thing was a dog fight. The wizard was awful. There was an era of computing where every app was like, I know what you're trying to do and I won't let you just do it. you will have to answer a flow chart of quiz questions before I do what you want. It's like, I don't need this kind of help. Yeah, this sounds awful. And it was just absolutely that experience over and over again. Yeah, that's rough. Okay, so I think for the Tim Matrix, we're gonna leave it at wrong idea And we'll put it kind of towards the middle, but like lightly on the side of Rong time. Again, this cube should be spinning through the cosmos. No one's listening to me. The question number two. Question number two, was this peak anything? I have a couple I'd like to offer you. Was this peak universal remote, I think pretty clearly. yes. Sure. Was this peak IR blaster No, that was the Xbox one. The Xbox one was like a company wide bet and IR blasting that Like everybody should have known better Fair. So Was this peak? TV remote. and I will allow you to pick any harmony you want for this is a harmony, any harmony Best TV remote just as a pure remote to hold in your hand and use No, we did a whole TV episode. You don't think so'll beith there? No. This wasn't peak TV remom at. No, because it doesn't do what it needs to do one hundred percent of the time. fair. Rough That is fair and actually that's a good distinction from Tivo which it worked did its job exceptionally well. Yeah. Yeah. But you also weren't expecting it to do everything else. It wasn't a magic wand. To would hard map the volume controls to your TV or receiver. It gave you a power button that was hard mapped to your TV And that was limit of its designs on other devices in your head. And for ninety percent of the people in the world, that's all they needed. That was probably more than they needed. Yeah. Okay. Do you guys have anything else peak anything? In many ways it's a peak gadget.ight? It's a product of that smartphone era where everything became kind of a computer gadget. Yeah. This is why people like it, right? It's like one of the gadgetiest gadgets you can get in your house So like in many ways this still is that dream. Yeah. Like what if you can gadgetify a remote control and like there's no that's pretty good. That's what it looks like. Yeah. So I think that one's pretty good there. Yeah, I think that's the one. It's It's just such a weird pre smartphone device. Yeah. And then it eventually just got killed by the smartphone It's definitely peak zapping. No one has ever zpped like this remote zapped. It is also peak screen in the wrong place on a thing. Yep. I don't think anything has ever had a screen in such the wrong place They made a whole case for why it was ergonomically better to have the screen on the bottom and they're just dead wrong. Just dead wrong U All right, moving on. question number three If you could time travel back and then in this case, we're going all the way back to like nineteen ninety nine and develop it yourself Could you make the product more successful Could we tell our Canadian friends something that would have made this thing Do better and hit harder too many problems to overcome. Interesting. I don't think it necessarily could have happened better with your advice is just with the technology at the time. not the simpler one behind you? That's like a five hundred or seven hundred? What's that one? That's the simpler harmony So this is the vastly more successful product. Yes. This is a five hundred twenty. fiveive hundred twenty. So this one, it has a tiny screen. it just has the four little buttons at the top, but the rest of it is dead simple universal remot control Once again, the volume buttons are just an abomination on this thing. They're teeny tiny inner. The vole control should always be the biggest buttons But you know, it has transport controls, It has a bunch of control menus. You can map this stuff, but it was just simpler. It did not have all the grand designs of this remote. and it was cheaper. So this one, I think for a lot of people is the canonical. universal remat. This is the one that they had. this is the one that they worked. You programmed it once. It wasn't trying to run five hundred macros. if it was, maybe you it'd actually never even set them up. You know what I mean? Like So do you think the answer, if you're time traveling back, are you telling these guys like do less? Do less. Yeah. Actually, the funniest part on this, I think the eight hundred eighty has it too, but it might be smaller So you can see it's the same layout really in both remotes. but in this one, the word help is printed at the top. And if the macro failed, you could push help and it would run the macro. It would do all the IR again It's like this They needed to land here more than they landed there. R? They needed to land at the five hundred twenty the simpler, more focused more effective product and they put all of their resources chasing the smartphone with the nine hundred and the one and everything else. This is actually a good seay to the next question, which is, will the youth ever make it cool again? So there have there's a company called Sofa Baton. that is basically just you just made that up. That can't be can't one not a major. But like there are you know, Matts saying this is like not a market. This isn't a thing. Like there are companies in this space still that make consumer products that people like. I agree that cool is a challenge But if you think you're going to be in a more offline mode in some way or less phone like centric You're going to end up at a device like that. John, the reason I bring this up is I think we are in a moment where people are eager to spend less time staring at their phone to do things. And I think a thing that is true and has been particularly true with televisions is that using your phone as a remote for your TV Mostly sucks. It's awful. And everybody tried to do it for a while, and I think has largely pulled back. And now we just have like the crappy remote you get with your Roku that is most people's experience with their TV. Do you think this idea of a physical remote do TV things but also potentially someome other basic smart homeomy things has a place in our lives right now? I mean, I think it can have a place in our lives, but I don't think it's going to come from a remote that doesn't come with your TV Interesting. Do you think like accessory remote I just don't thinkarter. I think it was hard enough, especially for the more expensive ones to sell general consumer on the idea of spending two hundred dollars on an extra remote. And I think it's just as hard now. are The TV remotes that are out now are fine As long as they're not controlling tieson, then things are good. I mean, this comes back to where is a computer. rightight? My Apple TV is deeply integrated into this smartph system in our house. like it's mostly home kit And I can talk into the Apple TV remote and turn off all the lights and like that's because the computer is over there connected to the bigger computer that is the house. Well, it's been interesting to see at various points The Rok' and Amazons and Apples of the world have tried to poke at some of these ideas. Roku went down the road for a while. How do we use your TV remote that comes in the box to control other stuff And I think like we've been saying with all of this, I have deep skepticism of the attached rate of any of that stuff. Does anybody set up any of these devices that require any work to get working I assume not But it just doesn't seem to have become a priority for anybody Like you just need to turn on your TV. then you need to get to some streaming video And at the end when you're there, it is all largely the same. Yeah. So even the path from here to there kind of doesn't matter, which is why all these interfaces are bad. So we don't think there's a future for interestnting, thoughtful physical remotes. No, I don't think so. Yeah. You you need a power button, a volume control and transfer buttons. It does.'s' happy me out. That's what all the remotes are now They're a power button they're a volumeton and they're transport controls and the microphone. That's it. That might be all that you need Yeah. You want it to be you guys got a sofa baton. C on. But I'm even looking at the sofa baton and I'm like I have no, I have no use for this. Like I think I think there's something to simimple controls for things like this. actuallyually it's really interesting to look at the picture of the sofa baton because it has a lot in common with very old Easy zappers. It's a few buttons. Yep. It doesn't do a lot It is very clearly designed to do a couple of things for you very simply and well, like control the volume of your television. and that's it. And that's actually maybe all we need from some of these things Moving on. Question number five This is a tricky one given that we just declared the final death of physical remotes. What feature of the harmony remotes Would you put on current remots Oh, I know, I know what it is. It's the help button but just tries it all again I mean, I wouldn't execute it that way. But the idea that like the thing is broken, I can't get it to work and like you should figure it out Perfect. interestnteresting That's a good idea that more devices in your life should have a button that is just clearly marked help And it's not like a weird chatbot interface like whatever that thing is, but like it will actually try to solve the problem for you. That's great. We should bring that back. That's not bad. John, what do you think? I would love for macros to work fair. I mean, I would love to be able to just do that, but yeah, I think the help is probably the most useful. Yeah, onene of the ones that drives me the most crazy is like you use I have a Roku TV through which I almost exclusively use the Google TV streamer because Roku's interface is awful it makes me angry. And you can go in and you can set default HDMI thing that it's supposed to go to. And boy does that not work correctly? And so all of these things are just They do constantly make you more things. And I think the idea of like All remotes now, they have, you know, there's a Netflix button and a like a Disney plus button or whatever and all these companies pay to be on the remotes, I would so much rather have those be like programmable macros That'd be amazing. Some of them are. some remotes will come with Yeah, the program. you get like capability But you get a star button. Yeah. greatreat. Thankks. And now I have a paramount plus button for aice I not buying the cheapest ad supported TVs in the market. Why if you spent money, you would get feat. I bought a frame TV becausecause you told me to and it's ruining my life.'m done Be because you were gonna buy an even cheaper knockoff of a frame TV That's fair. But now at least my TV knows when it's on and when it's off. All right. three more questions. The Vversgin History Hall of Fame Three questions, three tests that the product has to pass to get in And again, to be the most generous we can, we can consider the whole harmony lineup. I'm willing to give you twenty five years of harmony to make it past these and I spoiler alert. I think I'm with Matt. I don't think it's going make it Quion number one Did the Harmony do something truly new Yes,. The answer to that one is yes The idea that they were going to link together everything with macroros and like solve the They tried. they legitimately tried. not what it says. So this this is actually I'm being pedantic for a reason here because like Did this product have new, interesting, important, big ambitions Unquestionably yes. No I mean, literally like we're going to link together all the macros to turn on everything in sequence and you can push, watch a movie and we'll fire the macro off. That was did that. And I it did itly new and it did that. Yeah. Okay. eighty percent of the time. It worked. Did this product parentheses kind of sort of mostly in parentheses do something truly new? Yeah. Yeah. I buy that. Okay. Hall of fame question number two, was it either remarkably good or remarkably bad? No This is brutal. It middle of the road. It was as middle as it gets. Yeah. ye. Ironically, I feel like it was it was bothoth things, right? It wasn't just it was down the middle because it was both remarkably good and remarkably bad. eighty percent time it was remarkably good. percent it was remarkably bad. C collapse Breakinglyad Yeah. Yeah. L I don't know anyone who has medium feelings about the harmony remote, you know what I mean? Yeah not It's not like a milk toast television experience. It is either doing magic or it's utterly infuriating because the people can't figure out. We were enthusiastic about it. And they were either ' excited about the eighty percent of the time or they were furious about the twenty percent of the time So okay, here's actually an unrelated question I've been thinking about a lot in doing the research for this Sh? Logitech tried to make deals to become a default remote And basically like instead of Comcast shipping you its crappy membrane remote, try to ship a remote like this as your default cable boox remote, but then add on this additional vision to it, that it's like, okay, we're going toort of Trojan horse our S smmart home idea into your cable box remote. So they absolutely tried to do this. Okay. I think they might have even succeeded in a handful of places. The problem is that the cable companies were cable companies And they were not interested in spending one additional penny on any customer Which is also kind of the downfall of remotes in general. Right. I mean, like they were going to ship you the good enough remote. They would remain unchanged for twenty five years Like you can't have a vision that depends on the cable company being like, we're going to invest innovation. It's not a choice. We're going to make good hardware products.s like That's not going to happen it. L Yeahah, that's fair which I guess is why that was also the demise of Tivo was starting to make that particular decision Fair enough. All right, Hall of fame question number three Not that it matters, sorry Harmony remotes. Did it change history? it Is there a world before it and a world after it? If it had changed history, Microsoft would have never shipped the Xox one. I I don't I don't how much more clearly I can say this. So in that sense, it did. It killed Microsoft. No, it didn't prove the point that IR was the kiss of death enough. It's fair to dissuade one of the largest companies in the world from destroying the legacy of its gaming division. So I really do, this all makes me wonder, Nil, like do you look at this as a completely unsolvable problem that Easy Zapper and then Logistch gave like a real earnest college try to, but that nobody was ever going to do it. And actually we needed a different kind of technical innovation to get away from this. Yeah, you could probably build a product like this today that looks a lot closer to the vision is a lot more successful built on HGMICC Yeah. like with Wifi Bluetooth, you can you can much more easily connect to many more things. Yeahep. you can probably get there. And then the problem as Matt said over and over again is the market for that is zero because everyone already has a smartphone, which is one hundred percent that thing Right? Like if you want to Control my TV. you can open the horrible Sony app on my smartphone And you can just do that thing and it can also control the house and You can also look at the catalog of movies and actually buy one in c. Like there's a whole universe of things you can do with a phone. being like, here's a Dumber phone that only works in your living ro or is it has a button. What are we doing? Buttons. buttons are great, but then you're like, okay, what is What buttons do I need? You need a power button, a volume button and some transport controls John, what do you think? Like would you have a thousand TV's in your house right now. I want everybody to close their eyes and picture, John just surrounded by televisions. That is his earnest day to day life Like the version of this that exists on today's technology, with Wiifi and Bluetooth and HDMICEC and like Even go back to the organ to zap program guides. We're doing deep link search into this, but it is a hardware product. Does that do anything for you? No For my nostalgia only. Okay. Why not? Why does it not compel you? Because I don't I don't need it Uh, I I mean, the phone would be fine the remote that comes with The TV would be fine U, I mean, honestly, the Apple TV remote, sureure is fully functional for what I need it to be. So we really have just kind of good enoughed our way out of this being a useful product at all I think so Unfortunately. The fact that Roku gets to have a good remote and be the one that everybody uses just fills me with rage. I mean, they're a new cable company. Yeah. arere you going to spend one extra penny on your customers, Roku? And theswer is no we're going to put more ads into their face Yeah, fair enough. All right. well, harmony, you didn't make it in, but we all love you Bizarly. Everyone wanted you to be good. That's really true. We all wish you had been there. I do still really want to find my harmony one it It'll work once. it'll feel incredible, and then you'll put it away and never use it again. Yeah, probably.s that's the dream. That's what're here for. All right, we are done here. Thank you both for being here. This is delightful. I feel better about never having to Harvard airboat for this episode. So it's been great. I'm going go home, I get your Xox one. We're going' gonna put k walks under it and we're gonna really, really experience it. I go home and scream into my frame TV, which makes you push a rocker to mute the horrible. somebody make me a better remote. I promise I'll buy it, but nobody else will, so don't make it anyway. All right We are out of here. Thank you to both of you. Thank you to everybody for watching and listening. and a reminder that the best thing you can do You subscribe to the Verge, you get all of our podcasts ad free. You get to make sure that we get to keep buying old gadgets to keep doing stuff with. Thank you as always, we'll see you next time Virionistry is a production of the Virge and the Vox Media podcast networ. 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