Review of Caavo Control Center (May 2019 update): The Universal Remote Innovator enriches its system with new features

Less than a year after its initial release – and very successful – Caavo is updating its unique Universal Remote Control Center system with a host of new features including its first mobile app. Caavo hardware does not change and users of existing Caavo hardware will be able to access all these new features via a live firmware download that should be discontinued today, May 1st.

The amendments are sufficiently numerous and substantial that we have decided to publish our opinion on the revised product in a separate report. This will allow us to cover all the changes, instead of replacing our original review, which you will find here. It should be noted that the end result has not changed.

Here is an overview of what Caavo is deploying and how these features work, which have spent several days with the new Control Center firmware and mobile app (in beta).

First, let's look at the application. You'll immediately notice that you can now use your phone as a universal remote for any Caavo device you're connected to. The configuration of the mobile application remote control is about the same as that of Caavo's physical remote, but you have to get used to it and it's not as intuitive. That said, for users who really want to minimize, who need "TV control from anywhere" or just want a second remote control, it's a great addition, especially at no cost. additional.

Christopher Null / IDG

Family control features have been added to Caavo. They are also accessible via the updated application. Here you can monitor a TV connected to Caavo remotely, set permissions on what can be watched based on its rating, and even send a message that appears on the remote TV.

In the beta version of the application, I found that most of these problems were random. The remote monitoring feature does not allow you to watch TV through your phone. this actually amounts to getting a single still image from the TV monitored on demand, and only one image every 15 seconds or so. It only worked with video streaming during my tests; it did not work at all with a live cable TV stream.

A feature that allows you to choose a movie on your phone and tell it to play on a TV connected to Caavo did not work either. She has just launched the home screen of my Apple TV instead of zooming in on the appropriate application and starting the show. And some of the more parent-focused features did not work completely: a ranking filter only works with streaming content, not with live cable programming.

I've also found that by using the app, immaturity problems and other bugs often only hindered progression. Caavo's Universal Search works perfectly when you use the remote, but for whatever reason, the search system of the app is half-cooked. For example, the search for "party" did not find the movie The party, and the search for "fyre" did not find the documentary festival Netflix Fyre – Fyre.

Caavo

The voice search is integrated into the application, but it is not (at all) functional at the moment. The app also has a feature that lets you create a universal viewing list of streaming titles, but you can not import your existing watchlists from streaming services, making it a tedious process. I'm not interested in manually adding dozens of entries to my Netflix and Prime viewing lists just so I can have them both on one screen.

Christopher Null / IDG

Finally, the application is also extremely slow sometimes, regularly nagging the user with his version of the hourglass "wait please" pop-up. In the end, I stopped using the application and I simply relied on the standby remote control and the TV interface to get things done.

Unfortunately, in addition to all this, I had some problems during my tests with the new firmware running on the Caavo. The biggest problem I've encountered is that with the new firmware loaded, the audio stopped playing on my TV while watching streaming content. Invariably, I should restart the Caavo Control Center for the audio to work again, usually once a day.

Caavo's regular firmware updates over the last six months have solved almost all the problems I mentioned in my initial comment, but this new update unfortunately erases much of this situation by introducing new problems. Nevertheless, I hope that most of these problems will be solved in the same way that previous problems have been solved with live fixes, but of course, there is no way to be sure.

Finally, perhaps the most important change brought by Caavo is pricing. At launch, Caavo cost $ 99.95 for the box and $ 19.99 a year for a service plan. The new price is $ 59.95 in advance for hardware, plus $ 39.99 a year for service. (You can eventually pay $ 3.99 per month or $ 129.99 for a lifetime plan.)

Christopher Null / IDG