R3 Remote

Spire_Jeff

Has anyone played with the R3 remote? I see that there are commands to send text to the remote, and I am wondering how well this works and has anyone found any limitations? Would it be possible to use the display to navigate an iPod?

Jeff

vining

I have one on the shelf but haven't played with it but with 1 line for variable text how much fun could it be to navigate an iPod. I'm not a big fan of scrolling alphabetically on an iPod as it is but if I had to do it with only display line with delays and possible hang ups I'd go nuts.

iainshaw

I'd agree, you're not going to find yourself playing too much ZZ Top...

There's another thread that's surfaced from the deep to discus handling scrolling lists on TPs.

Our remotes and TPs are extremely poor at doing what an iPhone or iPod touch does extremely well. I don't see the point of trying to compete with functionality and slickness that we can't achieve even at many times the cost. Are you guys not starting to come up against the customer view that says "shoot, my iPod can do better than that"?

<bunker>me</bunker>

vining

iainshaw wrote:

Are you guys not starting to come up against the customer view that says "shoot, my iPod can do better than that"?

If they want to listen to their music through ear buds then more power to them. The newer iPod modules aren't as bad as the original and it allows you to jump through the list rather quickly. I couldn't take the ealier versions at all though and quickly got a Roku SoundBridge so I can interface with iTunes directly, well not directly but through the SoundBridge. With this I can do full text searches in each search category and advance seraches like artist by text and then albums for that artist and then song on that album just like a 5k server but for $199.99. Throw in a Buffalo TeraStation for $500.00 and you don't need a PC running or iTunes app open either.

iainshaw

Or another way would be to keep the Terastation, throw a Sonos ZP90 into the rack as a source and then control that on an iPod using the Sonos app (and the kaleidescape using remotescape, and the lights using the Lutron app). I'm not seriously suggesting that an iPod is an equivalent device but it's not the direct functionality comparison that interests me, it's the physical and ergonomic characteristics of the devices. An iPod touch is a physically more appealing device to interact with IMO and I think it is contributing to setting people's expectations of what touchscreens can and should be able to do.

Anyway, sorry I realise I'm hijacking a thread about R3s. My last post on this here