The $ 99 Caavo Control Center is a universal remote control built on machine vision

When I examined the universal Caavo single remote control system earlier this year, I concluded that it was probably the most promising approach that I've ever had. I've never seen home theater ordering, but it was too expensive at $ 399 – especially since its configuration was complicated. and lacked high-end features like HDR and Dolby Atmos.

Eight months later, the company returns with the Caavo Control Center, which costs significantly less at $ 99, supports Atmos and HDR10 (with an upcoming Dolby Vision software update this month), and offers simpler configuration experience.

It's all checked boxes. The catch? A service fee of $ 1.99 / month or $ 20 / year is now applied. And you have four HDMI inputs, half that of the old Caavo.

Picture: Caavo

"We wanted to send a person to Mars, but we had to first land on the moon," says Ashish Aggarwal, CTO of Caavo, describing the ancient Caavo. "We decided to take an ax and eliminate all the distractions."

These distractions include items such as customizable wooden lids (the Control Center is a dense black box), the IR adapter on HDMI included for IR blasters (it's now an older one). classic cable) and the invisible web browser automatically connected. on your streaming services and synced your watch list (it is now replaced by a new discovery feature). If the old Caavo was a unique idea to unify the TV experience, the new control center is only one idea: create an excellent remote control.

Caavo's major innovation is the use of machine vision to analyze what your devices do when you use your TV. The system knows what you are doing and, most importantly, whether the commands it sends to your devices are working as intended. It combines and matches the traditional infrared control with the HDMI CEC controls and the smart device network API. So he can turn on your TV with CEC help, adjust the volume of your receiver by infrared and open a Netflix broadcast on your Roku by sending a deep link on the network. . And it can keep track of everything you've looked at each device and search the catalogs from a single user interface. It's basically a little butler for your TV.

The new Caavo discovery feature relies on social sharing and playlists: you can create a playlist of the shows you've loved and share it instantly in public. The company is also recruiting influencers to create their own lists, and is working to extract the best existing TV listings from the Web and make them interactive. "We are all interested in the community and making discovery a real motivation for users," said CEO Andrew Einaudi. "Then you simply say," Show me what to watch. "

There are other upgrades: a new custom chipset makes it possible to do everything that artificial vision can be done, but video latency below 30 ms, fast enough for casual gaming. "We essentially forced our supplier to take an existing chipset and modify it to fit our products," says Aggarwal. "We do not need additional microcontrollers or FPGAs on the board, everything is in the chipset."

And the old Caavo was blocked if you used the built-in apps on a smart TV because he could not see the screen. No more: the company worked with TV manufacturers to develop API support. A future software update will allow the Control Center to support smart TVs from LG, Sony, Roku and Amazon Fire TV. The most notable name that is not on the list is Samsung, but Caavo says it works.

"We added information such as knowledge of the status of the TV. Some of these systems turn off Wi-Fi when the TV is turned off, "says Aggarwal. "We are so involved in things that [TV manufacturers] never think about it, they are grateful for the help – no one ever gives them feedback at this level. "

That explains more than just the state of televisions and remotes in 2018. We have an internal Caavo Control Center and we will be reviewing it soon – stay tuned.