DISH Hopper and Joey owners can now pick up a voice-controlled remote for $30. While we’ve yet to test its capabilities, voice interaction appears to be a highly successful initiative for Comcast and it’s certainly something I’ve periodically appreciated on Roku or Fire TV (and something we continue to wait on with TiVo).
Roughly half the size of a traditional remote control, Voice Remote fits in the palm of the user’s hand, much like a smartphone. DISH designed the remote to interpret natural language, populating search results based on program title, actor or genre, and building contextual searches to narrow options, as desired. It also utilizes voice commands to control basic functions of the receiver, including recording and changing channels.
Beyond the spoken word, DISH also appears to take the historically limited and fussy remote touchpad to the next level by hiding optionally illuminated numbers under its clickable surface. The backlit remote also conveniently includes IR to control your television and provides a remote finder feature.
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Damn. Voice, touchpad, IR learning, and backlit. This remote as it all but a headphone jack and motion. $30 is very reasonable too.
The few necessary buttons, no number pad until needed or requested and voice control make this the Senior Citizen remote my elderly mom has been waiting for. As a Dish subscriber who can do the most important functions on the current remote, the problem has been she is grearly bamboozled by the tons of buttons on the current Dish remotes and can't use functions like SEARCH, etc. because the remote is so overwhelming. I'll be getting that remote for her, for sure because she has been awaiting its release. As for me, I'm pretty cheap and may not get it. But on the other hand, it sure looks great and voice commands have become more common for me.
Seems like voice control is becoming a standard feature on remotes. I wonder if universal remotes from the likes of Logitech Harmony will soon incorporate voice? Would they be able to or is there something proprietary about voice control in each individual OEM remote and corresponding system that has it (Comcast's X1, the DISH remote above, various Android TV boxes, Apple TV, etc.) that would prevent a universal remote from incorporating that feature?