Battleangel

X10 - yet another remote control solution I haven’t considered for the HTPC. This was the first thought that crossed my mind as I woke up this morning It was quickly dismissed after assessing the specs and images on their site (which is quite frankly so infested by spam and ads that I’m not even going to place a link). If X10 stands for “Smart homes”, than I’d rather keep my stupid one until a serious company picks up the concept on a consumer level. I was hoping that Microsoft would have done that by now but apparently we are going to have to wait.

The list of remotes is getting extensive. And I still haven’t done a proper sweep of what is available abroad.

Somehow I feel this is the time to finalize a solution. No more hickups or half baked solutions for me. One fundamental thing that is still bothering me would be the choice of transmission technology. Basically IR (InfraRed) vs. RF (RadioFrequency). Then there are of course digital streams using a RF carrier wave but for now lets focus on the most commonly available technique - IR.

The worst that could happen is “repeating A” aka ghostwriting. This is similar to what I’ve experienced with the Sigma Designs Realmagic remote. The hardware really needs to have powerful solution for error detection and filtering. I’d much rather have to jab a key five times before I get a result than having every other command misinterpreted for the sake of fluidity. What a piece of crap that remote is, but you get what you pay for I suppose. IR seems stupid on paper and I’d be surprised if you can get it to work to the full capacity. Or is it just this product? I remember reading an article on the MacAirKey (from 1999) that mentions this exact problem. It’s not really a limitation of IR but rather the implementation.

To be continued …