Irdeto2engineer said: There are already hand remotes that can control all the functions... They are learning remotes and you can control your puter TV or placeshifting technology. Just need to buy one and learn how to use it.

Well, either that one went over your head or you've never used a Harmony remote.

As you have probably noticed Alan is generating remotes for a lot of devices that Sling does not provide. If Sling were to provide a virtual "Harmony" remote then it would save Alan a lot of work. Thus, why it was my Christmas wish for him.

Now, why did I select the Harmony? Two reasons.

1) I know it's the remote that Alan uses to generate the codes for the other devices.

2) A Harmony is not a normal "learning" remote. It can learn but in most cases the learn feature is never used. The company maintains an online database of remote codes. With the remote connected to your computer (via USB) and the provided software, you tell it the make & model of the devices you want to control. The software pretty much does the rest. No learning required.

Of course, we know this is all hypothetical because Sling could never provide such a remote.

Alan Richey said:  The big advantage of the Harmony is you have access to thousands of specific devices via their online database, normally with all the possible buttons already programmed in (basically, each time a Harmony user learns a button on a device it is automatically incorporated into the database.  A bit risky, as the 'Garbage In, Garbage Out' syndrome applies, but it seems to work 99% of the time). 

I asked about this and my understanding is they do an averaging thing on every possible key. ie;

A new device enters the system, the first user (#1 user) to enter the key presses gets full weight for the keys for that device.

Another user (# 2 user) with the same device downloads #1's key codes but finds one is incorrect. The correction gets entered into the database but held back from the download.

A third user (#3 user) downloads for the same device and still gets #1's users codes and again makes the same correction as # 2 user. This gets uploaded to the database.

A fourth user downloads for the same device. He gets all the same key codes as #1 user supplied but for that one key that #2 and #3 corrected for. He gets their version because it now carries more weight.

With this type of system, they eventualy have all the correct codes for every button on the remote, even the ones that #1 user never entered.

ryandh said: That would be pretty awesome to have built in. It makes you wonder how many people and what kind of resources Logitech has devoted to that function. Whether it's feasible at all for a company to add that functionality to a product. What's the cost of building the hardware in and maintaining it?

As I suggested in another thread, I can see the possibility where Sling could/would enter into an agreement with Logitech, to use their database.

A Sling user goes onto the Sling web site and enters make & model of the required device. The Sling software connects to the Logitech database, gets the required codes, builds a bin file and the user downloads the file.

Of course this would cost Sling (they would have to pay Logitech) and probably have to agree to never bring to market, a product that would compeate with Logitech's remotes. Sling could probably offset costs by charging a min. cost for each download. Maybe each download could even be tied to an individual's slingbox ie. - to prevent "sharing" of the files.

Something, anything would be better then the current setup. Not having remotes for many devices is a real weakness in the Sling product. As Alan has suggested, Sling does not help. They should provide some standards and guidelines for virtual remote generation. They say nothing and the fact that we can add remotes is not because of any help from Sling.