New Generation Remotes Ready to Bring Peace
An innovation from the past may bring peace to the living room today.
LAS VEGAS, Jan. 7, 2008 — -- Whether you call it a clicker, channel changer or remote control, there is no doubt that the idea of standing up to switch the programming on your TV is an inconvenience you would no longer consider acceptable. But as we add Tivos, DVD players, cable boxes and surround sound to our homes the remote control of the past is starting to become outdated and for many is starting to become a device of complexity and angst.
That's why Logitech will use this year's Consumer Electronics Show to try and bring serenity to the masses with the release of its new supercharged home entertainment remote called the Harmony One. It's a technology that Logitech scooped up just years ago at the same annual Las Vegas-based trade show that will see more than 140,000 attendees starting today.
Lloyd Klarke, Logitech's director of product marketing, reminisced about the roots of the product.
"Four years ago at CES there was a small company, really just two guys, called Intrigue Technologies that was demonstrating a universal remote far off the main show floor in one of the smaller booths. Legend has it that they showed up to Las Vegas with a concept, headed to Home Depot to design a booth and started selling their technology right there. They developed such an instant cult following that we knew over time this was going to be a product that people wanted and would love," Klarke said.
Logitech purchased the company and started on a mission to design the perfect remote control. As Intrigue morphed into Logitech's Harmony brand, several versions were released, but none as revolutionary as the Harmony One, which has been awarded a CES Innovations 2008 Design and Engineering Award.
Engineers spent more than 20,000 hours of research into the typical home setup and what they found was that the average household has 5.4 remotes on its coffee table to control everything from flat-screen TVs to the satellite dish and that one in five households have a set of instructions next to their cluster of remotes written out by a child or installer to explain how exactly to turn on the TV.
