Camaroon

[Camaroon]

Well I’ve been using this remote now for about 2 weeks and I’m pretty sure I have a final opinion on it.

Quality: it is very light and does not feel very substantial in your hand at all.  My wife and I are used to the remotes from Verizon for FiOS which I’ve always liked.  The plastic on the remote feels like it would break if dropped, and since it’s got a glossy smooth finish if your hands are sweaty for any reason it gets slippery and attracts smudges and fingerprints very easily.  Although a lot of the buttons are small they do have a nice solid feel when you press them.

Layout: this is probably the most frustrating thing about this remote.  Again, I’ve always felt Verizon’s remotes had the stuff you used the most in the right places.  This remote has the buttons we use the most spread out everywhere.  The Live TV, Recorded TV, and Guide buttons are these tiny little things way down at the bottom, where the playback buttons are all the way at the top.  In my opinion, the Live TV, etc. buttons should be right between the playback buttons and the aarows/OK buttons.  It just makes it awkward when you’re constantly using the aarow buttons to navigate and you have to move the remote around in your hand just to get to the tiny little guide button at the bottom.  I don’t think the size would matter as much if they were in a better place.

Response: when pointed at the IR receiver the response is actually very good.  Very few dropped presses and things happen fairly quickly.  No real complaints, just a nitpick about having to be pretty accurate with where you’re pointing the remote.

Set-up of other functions: this was another sore point.  Although the instructions made it sound very easy to make this remote learn a function from another one, it took me forever to get it into discovery mode.  It’s a very precise combo/order you have to hit to get it in this mode and I stumbled on it by accident.  Once I did, however, it learned the on/off function of my TV remote and volume up no problem.  I figured since I did the volume button it would do both up and down, but that’s not the case.

Controlling other components: this was the main feature I was looking for in a remote.  The ability to simply turn my TV and the PC on with the same remote.  Although it does do this, there’s one thing that really makes it annoying.  When I press the TV function button at the top to turn the TV on, it freezes on this function and won’t let you do anything else.  So basically, I hit the button and the TV button lights up blue to let you know you switched functions.  But then it just stays blue for like 20 or so seconds and doesn’t let you switch to the PC function until the light turns off. 

Bottom Line: I’d probably give it 2.5 stars out of 5.  It works well as a Media Center Remote, but is just overall frustrating to use and feels cheap.  One day I’ll probably switch to the Harmony line of remotes, but we’re sticking with this for now.

[Camaroon]

Mike, so I always forget that YAMMM has a configuration utility.  Since it’s kind of just set it up and let it work, I never think about the utility.  After I read your post I opened it up and noticed on the metadata tab how it says you need to add users or custom location so YAMMM can create the metadata cache.  Is it as easy as adding the user account for the other computer, or do I add a folder on the other computer?

And going back to my original post in this thread about my question with using MyMovies, I just noticed that you have the option to save metadata info in mymovies.xml format.  My original thought was that I wouldn’t be able to use YAMMM and MyMovies together which is why I asked if I’d have to set everything up again.  But if I check that box and have YAMMM download that file too then install MyMovies it should just read that file and I can use it just for the media manager capabilites, right?  I like YAMMM a lot so if I don’t have to uninstall it that’d be great!

I appreciate everyone’s help here.  There really is a lot of info on this site and I’m just starting to scratch the surface!

[Camaroon]

Definitely interested!  I’m sorry if it’s been posted elsewhere and I’ve missed it, but if you could post it that would be awesome.  Thanks!

[Camaroon]

Josh, thanks very much for your reply!  That definitely makes sense with how to install My Movies.  It seems like there are a couple of different ways to use My Movies, as a collection manager which fills in all the metadata, and as an add on to WMC to make browsing your collection better.  Can I do one or the other instead of both at the same time?  For example, if I want to continue using YAMMM, can I just install the add on to WMC to make the movie browsing better?  If I can, will it read the metadata from YAMMM and populate that on all my machines?

I still don’t understand why only one of my pcs sees the metadata from YAMMM.  If it’s saved as a file in the folder, why would my pc downstairs where YAMMM’s not installed not see it?

[Camaroon]

Alright, so I decided on a remote.  I found this while doing some more research yesterday and it apparently will control 3 components as a media center remote.  It’s the Noah Company MediaGate GV-IR01BK.  It’s only got 4 reviews on Amazon and I couldn’t find out much more about it, but it seems to be exactly what I was looking for.  I got two of them so once I get them and set one up I’ll come back and let everyone know how it works.  Thanks again for all the input!

[Camaroon]

Thanks for the suggestion about the keyboard.  I think I’m going to stay away from that though cause I want to try and make this as seemless a transition as possible for my wife.

I was doing a bit more looking and I went to buy.com which i hadn’t previously.  The first result that came up when I searched ‘media center remote’ was the XBox 360 universal remote which it says controls the TV and a media center PC.  Microsoft is selling a newer version on their site, a black one, but I don’t care which it is just as long as it controls the TV.  The big question is, will it work with one of those random IR receiver’s from ebay like the $5 one listed in the post above?  I searched how to get it to work with a PC and it said it would as long as I had the Microsoft remote IR receiver 1.0A.  I hope I’m not beating a dead horse but just throwing this out there in case someone has got it to work!

[Camaroon]

Thanks, guys, for all your help!  I really didn’t think that the remote was going to be the most frustrating part of this process but it’s always the little things.  I think I’m going to try and get one of those $5 ir receivers and a couple of the refurbished Harmony 300’s on Newegg and see how it goes.  Next up is trying to decide which plugins to install on my main system!

[Camaroon]

You know, after reading the Beginners Guide I immediately went to ebay to find that microsoft remote and ran into the exact problem you detailed.  I noticed the Msoft one had the button to turn on the TV but none of the ones I ebay had that button. 

Couple of questions for you guys.  That $5 IR reciever, that would work to add that functionality to my computer and allow me to use any IR based remote?  So, if it does, would it let me use that Logitech 300 that I posted before?  Also, that program you posted, how does that work?  Does it just interpret the input from the remote and do what you’ve assigned to the button, or is something that has to be loaded onto the remote itself?

I know I put a budget of around $40 for a remote, but Tigerdirect has the Logitech 700 on sale for $80 until tomorrow, it’s usually a $120 remote.  After doing a lot of research yesterday I thought maybe it would be worth it to splurge on a nice remote for the main system and get a cheaper one for my bedroom TV.  People seem to like it.  Anyone have this one?

I appreciate you guys posting!  After doing some searching I figured this would be a very loaded topic.

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