- The remote control might be the most important part
of your streaming experience.
Well, maybe that's an overstatement, I don't know.
But, it is extremely important
because this is the thing you interact with
every single day.
The thing that you have in your hand.
And to be honest
after seven or eight years
of the cord cutting revolution going on in earnest,
I kind of feel like we're getting pretty close
to the plutonic ideal of the remote control.
So today I thought it would be fun to look at five
of the most common streaming remotes out there.
We've got the Roku, the Apple TV, the Chromecast
the Fire TV, and the Nvidia Shield.
My gosh, that's a lot of remotes.
Ah, and we're gonna take a look at
what they have in common, what they do differently,
and what would be the perfect remote?
if we could the best from each world.
So let's dive in.
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Okay, let's get into it.
Now, before we get to what the ultimate remote control
would look like, let's take a look
at what these streaming remotes all do very well.
I will say first of all, they're not the cable
and satellite remotes of your,
thank goodness, those things were a mess.
These streaming remotes are simpler.
They're much more streamlined.
They're easier to manage.
They're not so confusing.
A lot of what you could do
with the old cable and satellite remotes.
Now they just put on home screens or in settings menus.
And I think that's great.
Now, what do these remotes all have in common?
Well, let's take a look.
They all have a power button.
They've all got volume and mute buttons,
except the Nvidia Shield remote
that one does not have a mute button.
They all have a direction pad and a select button.
They all have a home button,
a back button and a voice search.
So those are the common elements between these
and that's a pretty good starting point.
They do start to differ though
when we look at other features that they have.
Most of them come with a play/pause button
except for the Chromecast remote.
The Chromecast remote simply builds that
right into the directional pad and the center select button.
And frankly, I really like that.
I think we might want to integrate that
into our ultimate remote.
Most of them come a rewind or fast forward button
except for the Apple TV.
That one does not.
It has a play/pause button
but it depends on the left right select buttons
or the left and right directional buttons
to do that fast forward and rewind.
Most of these remotes have a dedicated button
for settings or menus.
There are some exceptions to that.
The Chromecast remote doesn't.
Now you can get around that by long holding
on the home button, but that's not exactly obvious.
And then there are the dreaded app buttons, okay?
Roku's been getting grief for this for years, right?
Those little buttons at the bottom
that they sell to streaming services
like Netflix or Disney plus or whatever
so that you have those shortcut buttons on the bottom.
They serve as advertisements for those streaming services.
The idea being,
hey, if I've got a dedicated Disney plus
and Hulu and Netflix button, I'm gonna go ahead
and get those services so that I can get to them easily
just from my remote, right?
Originally, the Fire TV remote didn't have them.
And then they caved and did the same thing
on their newest iteration.
So they've got four of those buttons on the bottom as well.
The only remote that doesn't have any at all,
is the Apple TV remote, or does it?
The apple TV might be the worst offender
of all of these brands as far as pushing you
to buy from their ecosystem, right?
So when you want to rent or buy a movie or a show,
yeah, you can find other ways to do it
but they're gonna push you really hard to do it on iTunes.
So when you push on the home or the menu button here
on the apple TV remote, it takes you to apple TV
where yeah, you're gonna be encouraged to buy lots of stuff.
So yeah, it still funnels you in,
it's not a dedicated button the way that those others have
but yeah, it kind of skirts that line a little bit.
The other thing that we should probably consider
is how these remotes look and feel in the hand.
For the most part, they're long, thin, and flat.
Flat on the front, rounded in the back.
The weird one in this case is the Nvidia Shield remote
which is kind of triangular
which you get used to it, but it is very odd.
It's nice that I can stand it it up on my table,
but it's weird that when I lay it down
it doesn't lay down flat.
The other odd thing about the Nvidia Shield remote
is that because of its design,
because it's so long and so thin,
the buttons on there, those little circular buttons
they don't really differentiate well from each other.
So it's a little bit tougher to find your way around
without looking down at the remote with the Nvidia shield.
Again, you can learn the remote.
You can take the time to figure it out.
It's just, yeah, it's going to take time.
The others tend to be a little bit more intuitive.
For example, the Roku remote is really great
and giving their buttons different sizes.
So that as you're feeling around with your finger,
it's easy to tell which button
your finger happens to be resting on.
Okay, all that being said,
if we were to craft our ultimate remote control,
how would we do it?
Well, first of all, I wanna hear what you think.
So go ahead and hit the comments.
Let me know what elements you would incorporate
into your ultimate remote control.
If we're looking at my ultimate remote control,
it would be kind of a cross between the Roku,
the Chromecast and the Apple TV remotes
all of what which I think are very good.
So let's take a look at my incredible design skills
as I drew out what my ultimate remote control would be.
Shut up, I don't wanna hear it.
I did my best.
Obviously I would want TV controls.
I want a power button,
I want volume and mute buttons,
and I like that those are on the side.
Roku does that really well.
So you put those on the side.
With the voice search button,
I would wanna separate that from the rest
so you can put it up at the top of the remote
where your thumb is least likely to stray.
As far as the direction pad and select button
I think the Chromecast does it best
as far as having that circle
with the button in the middle
it's really no nonsense and it looks great.
And I would not include a play/pause
or a rewind fast forward button.
Again, the Chromecast is our guide here.
We really just need that directional pad
and the center button when you're playing content
that acts as your play/pause
and your rewind fast forward, pretty simple.
A back button is absolutely vital
as is a home button to take you to your main menu.
Now take note, apple TV
this should not take you to apple TV
and then you have to click it again
to go to your actual menu.
It should go straight to your homepage.
And we want a menu button as well.
That menu button or settings button
would open up that settings menu
to make it really easy for you to manipulate that.
And then we get to the brand buttons.
Down at the bottom here
I have three brand buttons.
You'll notice that one of them is round
like the other buttons
and that one can be dedicated to that specific brand.
So if it's a Roku remote,
you get a Roku channel button for instance.
If it's apple, you go to apple TV plus
whatever the case may be, you get the idea.
But underneath that, we've got two customizable buttons.
This is something you can get on the Roku ultra remote
but that's about the only place that we see it.
And yes, I know that you can kind of backend
customize your Chromecast remote to do a similar thing
but that's kind of a power user move.
We're going for simple here.
So with those two buttons you could program them
to take you to Netflix or to Hulu
or to Disney plus or to Apple TV plus,
whatever the apps are that you use most often
that's where you should be able to program them to take you.
And the last thing we should consider is the shape.
No, we don't want a triangular thing
like the Nvidia Shield.
I just, not my favorite remote you guys.
If I had my druthers, I would do a cross
between the Roku and the Chromecast remote.
The Roku ultra that has all the bells and whistles.
It's just a little too chunky for my taste.
I actually prefer the feeling
of the lower end Roku remotes.
So they're a little bit closer to this Chromecast.
I love the curves on this Chromecast
and I love the the layout
of the directional pad at the top.
So maybe somewhere in between these two.
Anyway, there you have it.
That's my take on the ultimate streaming remote.
Really the ultimate remote.
It can do anything you need it to pretty done quickly.
But what would yours be?
Again, hit the comments.
I'm really interested to hear what you guys would think.
And hey, if you share this widely enough,
hey, maybe we can get some people paying attention
and redesigning their remotes
with this video in mind, who knows?
So thanks for watching everybody.
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