Now that the iPad is upon is, it is time to let it control every aspect of our lives, not to mention our home theater. There’s a ton of great apps out already that should make the iPad very comfortable in your theater, but what would it take to make it the ULTIMATE Home Theater Remote?
Check out these thoughts on where we’d like to see iPad development go!
Icon for Remote Buddy
Now that I’ve official suspended my DirecTV account, I’v switched entirely to a diet of EyeTV and Boxee, I’ve found that I have some issues with my remote control usability. After watching the videos of Remote Buddy on iospirit.com, I decided to give it a spin. Long story short, I don’t know why I waited. Remote Buddy essentially solved all my issues and simplified controlling all my applications with one remote. For my full review, and a lot more detail, check out my review on lunch.com.
EyeTV iPhone App
This is a follow-up to my recent review of the Elgato EyeTV 250 device for the Macintosh. This review will address the iPhone application specifically. If you want to know my impressions about the device itself, please check out my review.
As far as features are concerned, the EyeTV iPhone app delivers. It essentially allows you to stream live or recorded tv shows from your Mac directly to your iPhone (via Wifi AND cellular data streams).
The user interface is very clean and simple to navigate. The first screen gives you four simple options:
This is one of the best looking and simplest iPhone apps I’ve used so far… if only it worked…
Before I begin to tell you all the things that DIDN’T work for me, I will preface my remarks by saying I am using an iPhone 3g, not the newer 3gs, so it is possible most of these issues are resolved by using the newer hardware.
Elgato EyeTV Software
I picked up the Elgato EyeTV as part of my experiment to see if I could cut out my DirecTV service entirely. The short answer is… “no”, at least not quite yet.
The Elgato EyeTV 250 is a USB device for the Macintosh that allows you to watch and record TV broadcasts from over-the-air (OTA) or clear QAM (unencrypted digital cable) signals. Setup was pretty standard fare — plug in USB connector and power outlet, install software, connect antenna or cable source. I tested the device with both cable and antenna and the results were a bit mixed. The scanning channels process took quite a while for both sources, but the cable source returned better initial results. When using a smaller “digital OTA antenna” I wasn’t able to get all of my major network channels (CBS, NBC, ABC, etc). However, after connecting to a larger antenna which is mounted in the attic, I was able to pull in all the major networks. While this was great for my Mac Mini media center (which doesn’t really move), it did mean that it wouldn’t be easy to take the USB device as a travel companion and grab TV from different locations while on the road.
Plex logo
Sorry for the lame headline, but I’m very excited to pass along the latest announcement from the Plex group that Plex is now Snow Leopard compatible!
Highlights:
You can read all the details here:
http://elan.plexapp.com/2009/10/26/plex-0-8-3-let-it-snow-leopard/
Hulu Desktop Start Screen
As more and more television networks start making their content available on-line, the need for a traditional cable or satellite service continues to diminish. Yet one of the biggest obstacles isn’t necessarily the quality of the content, but it’s accessibility from the couch. Hulu.com is great when you’re sitting at a computer, but few people are willing to give up their traditional remote control for a keyboard and mouse on the couch.
Ready to upgrade your Mac Mini Home Theater to latest operating system offering from Apple? Might want to hold of 10.6 Snow Leopard upgrade for just a bit. It appears that there is an issue with Plex and the Apple Remote where any button presses while in Plex continue on to the operating systems’ default behavior. What exactly does this mean? Pressing the Menu button will take you out of Plex and launch Apple’s Front Row application. Additionally, the “up/down” buttons will change the system volume. I’ve been able to verify this on my own system, and I would advise holding off on upgrading until this has been fixed.
The Plex developers are aware of this issue and have even started a Snow Leopard forum so you can submit additional issues or monitor the status of the fixes.
Recently, I downloaded a high-def TV show through iTunes to watch on my Mac Mini Home Theater. Was this the seamless ‘on-demand’ experience I had hoped for… not exactly.
So, I’m a little late to the game and I decided to check out AMC’s Mad Men television show. Thanks to Netflix, I worked through the three disks of Season 1 just in time to set up my DirecTV DVR to record the Season 2 marathon. The next day, I sat down to start Season 2 and it began with a recap of Season 1… only during the recap I realized that I somehow must have missed an entire episode, specifically the season finale. I had already returned the disk to Netflix, so my solution for an instant fix was to buy the episode off of iTunes.
Purchasing via iTunes
Anyone who has used iTunes for purchases before knows that it’s generally very easy to find what you’re looking for. A quick search in the text field got my right where I wanted, but I could have easily browsed through the links and genres in the iTunes store interface to find my television show.
OpenRemote Logo
OpenRemote is an “Open Source community for Automation”. They are trying provide a complete open source solution to control the variety of “closed protocals and stacks” from typical home automation companies.
More importantly, they may be the answer to my “One Remote to the Rule Them All” quest! If you look at my recent article on Controlling The Mac Mini, I mention that my biggest issue with iPhone apps is that they cannot easily control other components in my system (for example, turning on the TV, changing the volume on the receiver, etc.) According to OpenRemote’s recent tweets, they have managed to do a simple “proof of concept” test using an iPhone, a Wifi network, and an IR blaster to launch FrontRow on a Mac. Read on to find out why this is so exciting.
We’ve all been there… it’s Tuesday night, you’re in bed, your wife is asleep, but you’ve really got a hankering for some Iron Eagle. Unfortunately, your wife doesn’t understand the integral part the rock ballads play in Doug Master’s intense training or daring rescue mission at the end of the film. Enter Airfoil…
Airfoil is a software app that runs on a Windows or Mac computer which can send the audio from your computer to several other network devices, such as another computer, an iPhone or Airport Express device. The interface is very simple. You choose the application with the audio you want to send elsewhere, and then select the device you want to send it to.