If you lose the thing it may be just as well. You can now control your television set with a smart phone. There is, as they say,
an app for that.
TV viewing habits are changing as more Internet and on-demand content — YouTube videos, streaming movies, shopping sites, Facebook photos — flows directly onto big screens. Navigating all of that demands more action from the viewer, including a fair amount of typing, which current remotes cannot handle.
“Everybody realizes that the remote control is the dinosaur of the consumer electronics industry,” said David Mercer, a television analyst at Strategy Analytics, a research and consulting firm. “The cable companies and the TV manufacturers are beginning to realize that they have to start moving away from the traditional, basic remote control.”
There have already been successful attempts to use smartphones as remotes. Sonos, which makes Internet-connected stereos, offers a free iPhone application that replicates every feature of its own $349 touch-screen remote control. Over half of Sonos customers now use the app, which links to the stereo over a Wi-Fi network.
Several television manufacturers, like Mitsubishi and Samsung, are following suit with smartphone remotes, and phone apps are part of both Apple and Google’s TV offerings.
If you lose this remote, you can always call it and make it ring.
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