CES Home Theater Remote Roundup

LAS VEGAS -- Powerful and innovative home theater remotes were everywhere at this year's CES, with companies like Open Peak, Philips, Portal Player, and Synaptics showing off some interesting new concepts that help bring together the diverse devices in a digital home. From clickable scroll wheels to high-res color screens and Wi-Fi capability, this new generation of remotes should make setting up your home theater and accessing digital media easier than ever.

Scroll Like an iPod

The clickable wheel on Apple's iPod players has long been a favorite navigation device of people with large music collections. As more households begin accessing those MP3 files in their living rooms, a couple companies are attempting to integrate that interface into remotes.

German PC maker Medion began bundling a just such a remote with its Medion MD96500 Media Center notebooks this past November. Medion's notebook and remote won't be available in the U.S., but the touch-based scroll near the top of the remote was built by Synaptics, the company behind the iPod's original Clickwheel.

Philips introduced its own scroll-equipped remote, the SRU 9600, here at CES. The 9600 uses a physical scroll ring to let users quickly navigate through on-screen lists or select which component they're controlling, activating only the relevant buttons on the device's segmented LCD touchscreen.

The real highlight of Philips' remote is its innovative set-up process. Users configure the 9600 by answering a series of questions about what products are in their home theater setup and how they're all connected. Philips plans to release the SRU 9600 by the summer at a cost of around $150.

Wi-Fi and VoIP, Too?

A company called OpenPeak developed the interview process used in the SRU 9600, and that process forms the centerpiece of the company's SimpleRemote reference design, which OpenPeak hopes to make available through several OEMs by the end of the year.

SimpleRemote incorporates features like Wi-Fi connectivity, a 2.2-inch quarter VGA color screen, and support for Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) devices, to create a remarkably powerful and easy-to-use control center for digital homes. The reference design is capable of controlling multiple rooms full of devices and automatically discovering networked webcams or Wi-Fi-connected digital cameras as they're connected to a home network.

The SimpleRemote also works with UPnP streaming media devices in a unique manner. Using the remote's Wi-Fi connection and color screen, a user can preview photos or video files stored on networked PCs on the remote before displaying them on TV through a the streaming media bridge.

OpenPeak plans even more uses for the SimpleRemote's Wi-Fi connection, including models that incorporate a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone. Imagine a setup where your remote rings in response to a VoIP call, and the music you're playing pauses automatically or decreases in volume when you decide to answer the call.

Media Center's Next Gen Remote?

At the CES Digital Experience event, PortalPlayer also showed off a connected remote with a color screen. The remote's software shared many similarities with Microsoft's Media Center interface, leading some to speculate that it might tie in with Microsoft's plans for a Media Center version of its upcoming Vista operating system.

Using internal memory, PortalPlayer's remote stored a database of songs, video, and photos stored on an associated PC using Microsoft's Sideshow standard for Windows Vista PCs.