Customer Reviews

InVoca 24977 Voice Activated Universal Remote

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2 star:		(1)
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I got the inVoca remote control as a gift. There are three main problems with the device:

1) In many cases you find yourself yelling the voice command 2, 3 times until the device recognizes it. Some words are simply impossible for it to decipher, for example, "Fox". Others like "turn on", "turn off" are too similar for the device to react properly.

2) Once a verbal command is properly understood, the device is very slow in terms of processing it (especially if you compare with the time to simply punch the corresponding keys).

3) Finally I got sick of yelling at it and decided to use it just as a normal universal remote. Sadly, most of the useful buttons are tucked inside the unit. You have to slide out an auxiliary internal unit. This unit is very bulky and it is simply too cumbersome to handle.

On the bright side, there is one aspect that I did like a lot, although it does not have anything to do with the voice interface. The device supports high level commands -- macros -- which allows one to do a bunch of low level commands by punching a single button (like switch the TV tunner to an aux input, turn on the VCR, and start playing it). You can even associate this task with a voice command (assuming you can make it recognize the command!).

In a nutshell, it seems to me that someone rushed this unit to the market just to release it in time for the Holidays. But it does need a lot more of engineering to make it usable.

The Invoca will work 100% as advertised. The problem is that in order to get it working perfectly, I had to use some techniques
I only learned through experimentation. These things are not in
the manual.