You already know about remote bloat. It’s that condition when you have a TV set, but also other devices that feed into that TV set. With each device comes its own remote, hence: Remote bloat.
\n
\nEach remote is adorned with 80 to 100 buttons. (I’m serious: Count them!) Each remote assumes it will be the only remote you need, which is why volume and channel buttons feature on a Blu-Ray remote and Play\/Pause buttons appear on the TV’s remote.<\/p>\n
Today remote bloat is rapidly joining a second phenomena: dongle deluge.<\/p>\n
The Internet-ready TV, also known as an HDTV, features various HDMI ports. These ports are much smarter than the old coax-in or RCA inputs from TVs of the last century. In fact, HDTVs are also called Smart TVs because in many ways they act like computers.<\/p>\n
My HDTV came with a slew of apps, including Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and a host of others.<\/p>\n
The Blu-Ray player also comes with a slew of apps, including Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and a host of others<\/p>\n
The Nexus Player also comes with a slew of apps, including Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and a host of others.<\/p>\n
The cable box, well, it just delivers the cable signal. It offers On Demand movies and shows, but no apps. Not yet, at least.<\/p>\n
See where I’m going with this?<\/p>\n
For each gizmo the TV has a remote control and a dongle. Presently, I have four remotes which I use to control the TV or a specific set-top box.<\/p>\n
My favorite control is for the Nexus Player, which features only four buttons. That’s nice. Otherwise, it’s remote roulette, which is complicated because the TV’s remote is the one used to select the HDMI input channel. So I use that remote to select a channel, then hoist another remote to activate said device.<\/p>\n
The problems with remote bloat are obvious and have been so for decades. The problems with dongle deluge are fresh and only now becoming apparent.<\/p>\n
The question I’m leading to is this: What’s the point of all these redundant dongles and devices?<\/p>\n
Should not the Blu-Ray player play only optical discs? It doesn’t, of course. It offers apps. Not only that, the thing starts up and it has to ask me — every single time — whether I want to watch the Blu-Ray disc or use some other feature. Why?<\/p>\n
Eventually I’d like to have only one device that does it all. No dongles. No remotes. Give me a simple interface that doesn’t wear out my thumbs. Allow me to purchase and use only the apps I need.<\/p>\n
I purchased the Nexus Player, hoping it would be the only device I need. It’s not. Perhaps someday in the future the Big Boys will figure out how to do remotes and dongles. With nothing on the horizon, I fear it will be remote bloat and dongle deluge for some time to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A new dimension to using Internet-ready TV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7441"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7443,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7441\/revisions\/7443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}