Hasta La Gadget!

The idea of using an iPhone or iPod touch as a universal remote has been tossed around for years, but it’s always required either a finicky external dongle or an extravagantly expensive home automation rig. Instead, we’ve been treated to a host of single-device remote apps for everything from FiOS, DirecTV, Comcast, and Dish Network DVRs to the Apple TV to the Boxee Box to… well, you name it. A little company called Peel has a dramatically different idea, though — it’s launching the Peel Universal Control system, which is designed to take your iPhone or iPod touch head-to-head with universal remote heavyweights like Logitech’s Harmony system.

The company is made up of a bunch of former Apple engineers, and their solution is extremely novel: instead of attaching a dongle to the iPhone itself, they’re controlling your A/V rack using a pear-sized (and Yves Behar-designed) wireless IR blaster that’s supposed to live quietly on your coffee table. The blaster (called the Peel Fruit) connects over ZigBee to a tiny network adapter (the Peel Cable, also designed by Behar) that attaches directly to an open Ethernet port on your WiFi router — a two-part hardware setup that seems fussy, but is designed to obviate the need for software configuration during installation, and allows the IR blaster to run for nine months on a single C battery.

Continue reading Peel turns your iPhone into a universal remote — using a wireless external IR blaster

Peel turns your iPhone into a universal remote — using a wireless external IR blaster originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Dec 2010 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has updated its Universal Dock for iPods and iPhones. Now, instead of being a $50 box full of plastic parts, it’s a $60 box of plastic and aluminum.

Gone is the old white remote, the one that was the exact size and shape of the little cookies that come with coffee in certain cheesy hotels, replaced by the hefty new aluminum model that comes with the AppleTV.

The plastic inserts are all still there, with adapters for the iPhones 3G/S and 4, all iPod Touches but for the first one, and the previous-generation Nano (the new touch-screen Nano is too small for a dock, it seems.

There is also one addition which should have been included from the beginning: a USB power adapter so you can charge the device as it plays it’s sweet music (or video, with yet another adapter kit).

Available now. And I have one question: why isn’t there a remote-control dock for the iPad, huh?

Universal Dock product page [Apple]

See Also:

• New Universal iPod Dock from Apple
• Rumor: Apple to Issue Keyboard With iPod Dock
• New Aluminum Apple Remote, No Longer Free

TiVo is porting its gorgeous interface for integrated live TV, DVR and internet video services to the iPad.

The company is announcing its new Tivo Premiere iPad app today; it should be available free from the iTunes store in the coming weeks.

There have been other iOS and Android remote applications, but TiVo’s is particularly noteworthy because of the sheer number of services it can control. From the press release, here’s a short list of what it can do:

• Gesture based control – Take complete control of all recordings, even dragging forward and back through a show with a simple tap or swipe
• Start watching what you want – Launch a recorded show, live TV or streaming video with the swipe of a finger
• Program guide – Browse your full-screen TV program guide without interrupting TV viewing
• Schedule – Schedule one-time recordings and Season Pass recordings from the device at home or on-the-go
• Get more from your shows and movies – Explore cast and crew and other recommendations of your favorite shows without interrupting the big screen
• Search – Search for all of your favorite TV shows, movies, actors or directors across both broadcast and broadband from Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, and more
• Share comments with your friends – From within the TiVo Premiere App, comment and share your thoughts to Facebook or Twitter about the show you are currently watching

A TiVo spokesperson confirmed to me that the app will search and launch every service TiVo offers, from on-demand video to streaming music. (And remember, Hulu Plus is still coming.)

This is where TiVo’s ability to push all of its services through one box is particularly powerful: I don’t have to switch inputs or apps to see what’s on live TV or Netflix.

TiVo Premiere To-Do List, Highlighting Amazon + Netflix

About the only thing the app can’t do is stream video from your TiVo to the iPad. I’m sure that will spawn a horde of knee-jerk complaints from people who believe the world owes them everything they can possibly imagine.

From my experience using Comcast’s similar but on-its-face less-awesome Xfinity TV iPad app, browsing television and on-demand video on a tablet is both very different from and obviously superior to using a traditional remote.

It’s almost unfair to call this class of apps “remote controls.” TiVo’s press release calls it a “two-screen experience,” and that’s closer to the truth. It’s more like flipping through a magazine — an oversized, interactive, full-color TV guide — that’s wirelessly linked to your big screen.

We’re separating out reading, browsing and management from the big screen, bringing the text closer to our eyes and putting the objects we’re manipulating directly in our hands. Twenty years from now, we’ll fun of our early-21st-century selves for ever doing it differently.

The remote reimagined [TiVo]

See Also:

• More TV Coming to TiVo and Roku This Fall with Hulu Plus
• TiVo CEO Sees the Demise of Network TV
• Our Remote Controls Are Amazing, Yet Nobody's Happy
• It's Another QWERTY Keyboard, Now for TV
• Apple Redefines Remote Control — Now, It's Your Cellphone
• The Real Original Remote Control: Zenith Space Command
• Case Turns iPhone Into Universal Remote While Charging It

It’s a little strange that the Boxee Box by D-Link feels like a late entrant in this year’s crowded smart TV market — the core Boxee software has been around forever, and the Box itself was announced way back in January at CES. But a platform switch from NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 chip to Intel’s Atom-based CE4100 platform cost Boxee and D-Link valuable time, while the Boxee software went through a dramatic UI transformation from the beta to 1.0. What’s more, Boxee’s gone from being an upstart rock’n’roll rebel to a legit market player, with a Netflix deal on the books and — wonder of wonders — an agreement to bring Hulu Plus to the Boxee Box sometime next year. That’s a lot of changes, and, quite frankly, a lot of hype — Boxee’s dedicated fans are expecting the small company and its asymmetrical Box to show up no less than Apple and Google. So have Boxee CEO Avner Ronen and company pulled it off? Is the Boxee Box the ultimate connected TV device? Or has a punk rock media revolution turned into just another polite New Wave streamer? Read on for the full Engadget review to find out!

Continue reading Boxee Box review

Boxee Box review originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Nov 2010 16:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When technology company executives want to show their dedication to an idea, some get a tattoo. Boxee’s Avner Ronen, apparently, puts a giant button on his media center’s otherwise minimalist remote control. The image above may well be ‘shopped, but the man’s dead serious about the final result — not only is Netflix coming to the Boxee Box, we’ve confirmed it will be front and center on future remote controls. Hit up our full Boxee liveblog to find out what else we learned!

Boxee Box remote gets dedicated Netflix button originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Nov 2010 21:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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