[OT] HDTV recommendations?

[Scott Allen]

On 13 June 2011 17:34, Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Harmony remotes are doing very well and if people are
> willing to shell out that kind of money to get a better smarter remote,
> clearly there is demand for such things.  If your equipment isn't designed
> to work well with such remotes and in fact makes them nearly impossible
> to make work well, then you deserver to loose market share as a result.

So how many TV marketing brochures or technical specifications have
you seen that say:
"Includes additional IR codes for discrete control of power, inputs
and other functions, for use with other company's remotes"?
The TV manufacturer doesn't make any money on the sale of these remotes.

Harmony is doing a pretty good job of handling menus and other
multi-key sequences to switch things, so it's not like most of these
TVs can't be made to work at all with a Harmony.

How often do you think that a consumer tells a manufacturer "I didn't
buy your TV because it doesn't have discrete codes to work with my
Harmony"? How often have you seen postings on the Internet, even in
technical forums, which say "I wouldn't recommend this TV because it
doesn't have discrete IR codes for intelligent remotes"?

I doubt that many marketing departments feel that they are loosing
market share because of it. Believe me, if they thought that adding
discrete codes would increase market share enough to justify it, they
would. Otherwise, as you say, they deserve to loose market share for
not recognising this fact.

Lennart,
Please note that I agree with you. I get just as pissed off as you do
when my Harmony gets out of sync (although the "help" button usually
cures it). I had to come up with some tricks to get my Samsung TV to
properly switch inputs (It has discrete input codes but some don't
work properly).

I'm just playing devils advocate to try to explain why the
manufacturers probably don't think that they are as insane as we feel
they are. ;-)

-- 
Scott
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