The touch screens offered by the remote manufacturers originated in a forgotten era and cost the consumer at least double what a pad costs. The consumer balks at spending so much money for a very limited and dated user interface. In the consumer's mind the pad is "free". And, the remote manufacturers' pad offering is mostly a "wand" type of mentality trapped on a touch screen. I think that the consumer's reasoning is: "Why not go back to the wand and have a user interface that matches the hardware in hand?"

It's a different interface. Pads should allow scrolling, dragging, pinch, and swipe.

The obvious shortcoming of a pad is lack of hard buttons, but I'm not seeing consumers grasp this as a shortcoming. They are seeing "free" and "only one remote".

Another disadvantage of pad is that it does not allow heads up operation.