My grandfather, a regular country man, is horrorized by the amount of choices he has.
Nowadays there is a remote for the TV with a lot of buttons, another for the video decoder, with more buttons, and another for the radio, with yes, more buttons.
He was used to have a machine which worked upon being switched on. The TV had buttons labeled 1-10 for the ten channels. The radio only needed a dial and a volume slider.
He can't use the radio anymore and, with his age, he's starting to get stuck when he presses the wrong TV button (teletext, menus, etc). We taught him to turn the TV off and on again.
More choices is not always better. Interfaces need to be simple or nonexistant. And, by the way, TV manufacturers should ship TVs with two remotes. The regular one, and another for seniors, containing only buttons 1-10 and the volume control.
Seniors, for some reason, think they'll blow the machine up if they press the wrong button. And seniority is where we're all heading...
My grandparents always lament how complicated things are these days. They too just want a simple 1-10 and on/off remote. These do exist, but I keep reminding them why it's not possible for them: they have cable. And a DVR. And a DVD player. And a sound bar.
In the days of simple on/off TVs, these didn't exist. I know they're not going to give up the Food Network, ESPN, Nickelodeon for the great-grandkids, CSI, etc. Things are more complicated now for a reason. When there were only 3 channels, you only needed one remote with 10 buttons on it. I agree that interfaces have gotten out of control (I can enter the menu on my TV without the remote, but I can't exit it?), but the reality is, you get features or you get simplicity. There's no way to control 3 or 4 disparate systems with all their capabilities with only 10 buttons and no on-screen interface.
Yes, it's not really possible with current products. But part of the point is that we should strive to make it possible; the original 6-button Apple remote should be the minimum and every additional button needs a significant justification for its existence, such as volume control.
On/off? Make everything power efficient, turn off after some idle time or detecting that no one is around, reliable auto power on across devices (HDMI-CEC is terribly unreliable), reduce "on" times to no more than two seconds, etc. (requiring a full minute for a TV to boot is insane)
Fast forward / rewind? Reuse left/right arrows. Heck Netflix on my TV doesn't even let you use the dedicated fast forward / play / etc buttons - you have to use the d-pad.
Number pad / channel control? Depends on the person. Cable's dying though, so it makes slightly less sense each day.
3D button? Detect whether glasses are being used. Or develop useful non-eyestrain inducing 3D in the first place.
Widescreen button? Ditch legacy hookups already!
Closed caption button? Who wants to toggle this often enough to warrant a dedicated button? (Yes I know broadcasters are retarded enough that you need to, you shouldn't need to though)
Device selection? Maybe one input selection button. But the button presses should always go to the intended device without having to push another button on the remote. Yes, HDMI-CEC sucks for this again (big surprise)
How about ten (or so) nice big buttons with OLED key caps? I've used rather remarkably simple smart remotes in the past; their only real problem being that they used resistive, early-generation LCD touch screens, which are not great from a tactile perspective. A simple, clearly labelled remote that's capable of changing context beats the heck out of three or four devices with dozens of tiny, poorly-labelled rubber chicklets.
It doesn't necessarily beat the heck out of anything. Tools with changing contexts, be it a remote or software, are highly confusing for users. They always have to remember in which state they are, especially hard when there is bad visibility (like a remote you want to press blindly). vi isn't hated by so many without a cause.
Nowadays there is a remote for the TV with a lot of buttons, another for the video decoder, with more buttons, and another for the radio, with yes, more buttons.
He was used to have a machine which worked upon being switched on. The TV had buttons labeled 1-10 for the ten channels. The radio only needed a dial and a volume slider.
He can't use the radio anymore and, with his age, he's starting to get stuck when he presses the wrong TV button (teletext, menus, etc). We taught him to turn the TV off and on again.
More choices is not always better. Interfaces need to be simple or nonexistant. And, by the way, TV manufacturers should ship TVs with two remotes. The regular one, and another for seniors, containing only buttons 1-10 and the volume control.
Seniors, for some reason, think they'll blow the machine up if they press the wrong button. And seniority is where we're all heading...