Most of us have had to deal with the frustrating experience of dealing with a clutter of badly designed remote controls for the various entertainment devices that occupy our homes. Few of us do anything about it -- other than perhaps buying a new remote which, like The One Ring of J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings tales, we hope will bind them all and unite them.
Predictably, the result is usually darkness of the type better not committed in front of children for fear the violent outburst may irreparably scar them.
Zero1.tv of Berlin took the opposite route: Instead of trying to work with terrible tools, the innovation design company with roots in the television industry reimagined the remote from the beginning.
"It was too frustrating and pointless to deal with a terrible experience, so our founder decided to start from scratch and create something easy to use," said Monique Witt, the company's business development manager.
The result was the VooMote One, an infrared cradle for the iPhone or iPod Touch that uses an app to create a customizable remote control for any major home entertainment device with just a few taps of a finger.
What's more, the device can automatically create a sequence of actions to turn on all devices needed in the entertainment hardware chain with just one touch, so you no longer have to turn on the Blu-ray player, sound system and TV separately to watch a movie -- you just touch "Watch a movie" and it turns on all of the needed devices itself.
The VooMote One launches in March, available through the zero1.tv website for around $70.
Who knows, the VooMotejust might be the one thing to rule them all....