Lost remote? Hopefully it’s not the Ray Super Remote, a $199 piece of hardware announced yesterday at the Code/Media Conference. Ray, according to the company, is a touchscreen universal remote control designed for the Internet generation.
“The Ray Super Remote grew out of my frustration that despite living in the Golden Age of television, I was struggling to find content across proliferating platforms and using a multitude of archaic TV remote controls to do so,” said CEO David Skokna. “I set out to create one device to control my entire living room and offer the personalized content search and discovery experience my family was craving.”
The remote is not only designed to replace all living room remotes, but also to enable content discovery and tap into connected home devices. While Ray works all pay TV services, the company is working with Dish to integrate the remote with Dish’s Hopper (its DVR service) to allow customers to see DVR content on the actual remote.
In order to connect to most home devices, Ray utilizes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, infrared and ZigBee. Even Peel – perhaps the largest universal remote provider – understood its software limitations, and recently partnered with Philips on its Pronto product at CES 2015.
Whether it’s a separate piece of hardware, or smartphone software, the universal remote arms race is heating up.