There's something vaguely reminiscent of vintage sci fi in this new remote from Monster, but there's not nearly enough of that something to make the design palatable in any way.
The Monster MCC AV50 Home Theater Controller, $50 next month, is a "tabletop universal remote control" that has a "Web-based setup." We have no real grasp of what these descriptions indicate, but assume the device to be bulky as hell (that's the "tabletop" part) and have a simple onscreen setup (that's the "web" part).
Maybe there's a market for such big, easy to use controllers, but why anyone would want to wield a QWERTY-like keyboard without the keyboard is beyond us—especially one this ugly. Indeed, it's hard to believe that this announcement was coupled with Monster's new, aesthetically pleasing HDMI cables. [Gearlog and PCMag via Crunchgear]