the heap

The Apple TV is super cool. We bought one a year or so ago and after finally unpacking it and setting it up after the move, we’ve been using it more than ever before. The technology is compelling — buying movies or TV episodes off the iTunes Music Store is painless — but my favorite feature by far is the remote.

The Apple TV ships with a stock white remote. I understand that it’s the same device that Apple packs with their laptops. It’s nothing special, but it does the job. If you have an iPhone, though, there’s a much better alternative: a free download from the App Store, called (appropriately) Remote.

The user interface is similar to the iPhone’s iPod interface that you use to play media on the phone. After pairing with the Apple TV, Remote talks to it over the wireless LAN to let you browse content and otherwise control the machine. Tap the movies button to get a list of the installed movies, tap the TV button to see a list of your available TV series… from there you can drill down into an episode list. Once playing, you can control playback using gestures or buttons in the interface. You can search your library, the iTunes Music Store or YouTube, and when you bring up the search interface, the iPhone displays a keyboard for data entry — a massive improvement over the regular remote (where you’re presented with an on-screen keyboard and navigate up, down, right and left with the remote to position the cursor over a letter and then hit a button to select it).

I’m convinced that this sort of interface is the future of device control in home entertainment. Universal remotes are convenient and reduce clutter, but they’re ultimately dumb devices. A friend and I were talking over the weekend and he was saying that he’s got a remote programmed with a macro that can turn on the television, receiver, and cable box with the push of a button. But since it’s still just blindly firing out IR signals he finds that his wife sometimes has trouble getting the aim right — sometimes she finds that she turns the remote away or puts it down too soon (after seeing the TV come on) leaving one or more of the other devices off.  It becomes a nuisance to try and get everything up and running correctly. Hopefully, some day, device manufacturers will come together and agree on a common interface, and all the components in your home theater will be as easy to control as the Apple TV is today.