Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re looking for high-end audio quality without running wires all over your living room, you don’t have too many options. Usually wireless sound suffers from terrible compression and signal loss when you send it through the air. Aperion Audio wants to fix that problem, and promises audiophile-grade sound quality with its new Zona Wireless Surround Sound Speaker System.

Simply plug the speakers into power and plug the wireless transmitter into your audio source, and the speakers automatically sync with one another and stream from the base station. Aperion specifically created the system so setup was simple, and the transmitter even has a USB port on it so you can use the speaker system as a wireless set for your home computer. The speakers have a range of up to 150 feet from the transmitter. If you’re interested, the set is available now for $499 list, and includes two speakers and the wireless transmitter.
 

Western Digital is working hard to grab some headlines from Google TV and Roku. Witness the just-released WD TV Live Hub media center, a full 1080p media player with a 1 terabyte built-in network hard drive that give users the ability to play all their personal media on any screen in their house. This media center lets users rent or purchase movies through the Blockbuster on Demand service the same day that they’re released on disc.

This media center is also a media server. Use it to stream HD video, music, and photos to any compatible TV or mobile device anywhere in the home. You can also use to to stream content to iPads, iPhone, and Android phones using third-party applications. It lists for $199.99.

At the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in Denver, Colorado, Aperion Audio has debuted it’s Aperion Verus Grand line of home theater speaker systems. The system feature a three-way bass reflex design, a one-inch Aperion silk dome tweeter, two five-inch woven Kevlar mid-range drivers, and two six-inch woven Kevlar woofers. The goal of the line is to create accurate, uncolored lifelike experience, the company says.

While there’s no shortage of home theater systems for those with money to burn, Aperion wanted to keep this line within range of the average home theater buff. Pricing starts at $1,798 per pair for the Verus Grand Tower, $699 for the Verus Grand Center, and $598 per pair for the Verus Grand Bookshelf. The company is now accepting pre-orders, and units will ship on October 30.

In yesterday’s roundup of the good, bad and ugly in new remote controls, we included one photo of a vintage remote: the Zenith Space Command. We identified it as the first TV remote, gave some details on its ultrasound-frequency tech and included a CC-licensed photo of an early model.

However, the Zenith Space Command we included was not, in fact, the first version of the device. The post prompted this friendly email from Wired.com reader Dan Turkewitz:

You’re right that the Zenith Space Command is the first commercially available remote. But the model you have pictured is one of those fancy “new” models! This is the original.

Sadly it doesn’t work very well on my 46″ plasma. But it has a place in my home theater setup anyway.

The next model up from this had a huge advance–four buttons: on/off, channel and volume up and down. That one sits on my brother’s desk.

As to its “Tired” features: the channels on the TV could also be changed by jangling a hand full of quarters, which made the same frequency sound as the metal bars in the remote. A trick my brothers and I all used when we weren’t happy with the channel choice of whoever had the remote. Which usually resulted in some fights.

I don’t know; given the current Apple-driven minimalist drive to pare down device controls to the smallest size and fewest number of buttons possible, you could easily argue that this first model of the Zenith Space Command was ahead of its time in more ways than one.

All images and email via Dan Turkewitz.

See Also:

• Apple Redefines Remote Control — Now, It's Your Cellphone
• Three Futures of Remote Control: Apple, Sony, and Samsung
• Our Remote Controls Are Amazing, Yet Nobody's Happy
• Man Creates Huge Online Museum for Vintage Calculators
• Tracing the Army Knife's Swiss History
• Wired Test 2007: Gadget Hall of Fame 1956 – Zenith Space Commander …
• Remote Controls to Get a Wireless Upgrade

Today, Apple updated its iOS Remote application to version 2.0. The free Remote app is now optimized for the iPad’s larger display and supports streaming from shared libraries over wireless networks with computers running iTunes and the new Apple TV using AirPlay.

But Apple’s vision of using your iPad — or iPhone — to play virtual DJ is just one of several competing ways of reinventing the remote control.

Earlier this week at CEDIA 2010, Sony showed off AV Receiver Remote, a similar (and similarly free) iOS universal remote application for its wide range of media appliances. While Apple’s Remote application allows you to queue up music from your library and control speaker volume, Sony’s allows you to do that and more: You can also control room lighting, and stream internet, satellite, or broadcast radio. Christopher MacManus was able to record a hands-on for Sony Insider:

Just as Apple’s remote application leverages its strength in high-end computers and media players, Sony’s app leverages its strength in home theater appliances. Apple can send a movie to your television, but it didn’t make your television (or the receiver your TV might be connected to).

And last week at IFA 2010, Samsung used its new Galaxy Tab to demonstrate its Home Watcher app for Android, which leverages the Korean tech maker’s even more ubiquitous position in home appliances.

As Vivian Kim observes, writing for Apartment Therapy Unpluggd, Samsung’s “washers and dryers, refrigerators, microwaves, ranges, and home entertainment devices” can allow them to position their phones and tablets not as Apple imitators, but as genuine home automation solutions.

You’ve never had a remote control for your refrigerator before, and maybe you didn’t even know you wanted one. But once it’s within the realm not just of the possible (it always has been, for high-end early-adopters) but reasonably attainable for Samsung’s global middle-class consumer base, something has changed.

How much will we want to do with a single remote when that remote is not an infrared box wrapped around two AA batteries, but a powerful computer with an intuitive interface?

In different ways, that’s the future towards which Apple, Sony, and Samsung are all pointing.

See Also:

• Apple Redefines Remote Control — Now, It’s Your Cellphone
• Sometimes the Remote Pushes Your Buttons, Too
• It’s Another QWERTY Keyboard, Now for TV
• IR Dongle Turns iPhone into Universal Remote
• How Google Instant Could Reinvent Channel Flipping
• Samsung Tablet to Debut on Big Four U.S. Carriers