TV Remotes with "Radio Buttons"
By
Staten Island, NY Posted: 1/17/2016 1:00:00 AM
Why don't TV remotes have "Radio Buttons" to let you jump to your favorites?
From the earliest days or car radios, the most popular feature has been the six buttons that let you jump directly to your favorite stations. It was particularly important in car radios because drivers can't take their eyes off the road for more than a second.
With these six buttons, drivers don't even need to know the actual station numbers. All they need to do is hit button #2 and it jumps directly to what they're looking for. After a while, some drivers only listen to the stations in their presets so it's become important enough for some stations to remind listeners to save their station in the presets.
Now that there are so many cable and satellite stations, why don't we see remotes with preset station numbers?
I'll answer my own question. It's because TV remotes are stuck in the 80s. They use crude infrared signals that flash invisible blinking lights that the TV picks up with a simple optical sensor. In order to bring remotes into the 21st century, they need to send genuine digital commands directly to the TV using a radio signal. I wrote about this a while back when I gave 5 Reasons Devices Should All Have Bluetooth Remotes.. Once we break free of the limitations of infrared remotes, our TVs will finally have some of the features our car radios have had since the 50s.
Joe Crescenzi, Founder
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