Logitech Closes The Harmony/PS3 Loop

Long time readers will know that I am an avid proponent of getting a good universal remote to control your home theater setup. It's a lot better than a basketful of remotes and it's very likely to make a complex setup usable for somebody other than the person who did all the wiring and can say things like "I don't see the confusion. Look, the PS3 is on Component 2 on the video switcher and the audio comes in on the receiver under 'DBS 2'. What's the problem?" and then you get this Penny Arcade cartoon. So anyway, we've had a series of universal remotes for a bajillion years - I wrote a post back in January 2007 when I got my Logitech Harmony 880 remote and it still stands.

There's one fly in the ointment. Sony made the ... let's call it "awesome" decision that the PS3 would use Bluetooth for remote controls. Meaning the only remote you could get was Sony and it wouldn't control anything else. Yay. Back last February I discovered that Nyko sold an infrared remote that had a little USB dongle to plug into the PS3. Read more about that here, but the short form is that it was better than nothing but still a flawed operation.

As I understand the issue Sony was being buttheaded about licensing any component to use the Bluetooth protocols (at least that is what Logitech said. Sony being arrogant and proprietary? That's unpossible!)

Anyway, somebody finally quit playing chicken and Logitech now sells a little gizmo that is an IR receiver and a Bluetooth transmitter. You plug it into the wall, do some simple Bluetooth pairing with the PS3 and hey presto! The Harmony remote can talk to the gizmo (via IR) and the gizmo talks to the PS3 (via Bluetooth). The remote can even turn the PS3 on and off just like a real component.

I bought one and it works as advertised. It's a little pricy I suppose, but as things have developed the PS3 has become our primary DVD player as well as Blu-Ray so it is useful to make it work just like everything else. Now the only thing that won't play nice with the Harmony remote is the Wii and nobody cares about that because the Wii has no reasonable video playback use. One drawback to this solution is that gizmo will only work with a Harmony remote (it doesn't come with any remote at all and the Harmony remote gets the codes from the internet software you use to program Harmony gear) so if you wanted to use a Pronto or a Crestron automated system or whatever you'd be out in the cold. In theory if you got ahold of a Harmony remote for a few hours you could teach the commands to any learning IR remote. In my case I have a Harmony already so this works great. I don't foresee wanting something other than Harmony during the PS3 lifecycle and if something odd happens I can always use the "old" Harmony to teach the new hotness what to do.

Lost is Back Tonight!

Lost season five premieres tonight and I'm pretty excited. I picked up season four on Blu-Ray via a holiday Amazon gift card and re-watched it over the last couple of weeks. Wow, season four was just really good. Watching it a second time just emphasizes that. Last year I posted that I didn't like the flash-forwards and I stand by that analysis but season four works despite that issue. I'm a little worried that moving forward the "guess the chronology" game is going to spread but maybe it won't. (Minor spoiler alert I suppose: Damon Lindelof has said in several places that this season the viewers are asking "Where is the island?" and hopefully following that with "WHEN is the island?" I like the idea of the question, but I'm afraid it's going to turn into a series of "What year did that cell-phone come out?" or "Wait, which year is the year of the Dragon?" games.)

One "blog nubbin" I have in my file is an announcement that seasons one and two are coming out in Blu-Ray during 2009 which isn't worth an entire blog post, but I'll combine into other Lost talk.

Rewatching season four made me really want to watch the first two seasons because I got quite a bit out of the second viewing of seasons three and four. I'm especially curious if I can identify the point where it seems to shift from "Are they just making this up as they go along?" to "No, I really think they have a plan. At least now they do." Personally I think that point comes somewhere during the second season, but I watched the second season in quite the hurry (catching up on DVD to watch season three), and I wasn't always paying as much attention as I'd like. Having said all that there was no way I'd want to *buy* them on DVD, and renting them from Netflix is a pain because some times I want to go back and review a particular part of a particular episode. (I'm seriously considering keeping season five on my DVR in it's entirety for that reason.)

I have to say I was a little disappointed with the commentary and extras for the season four Blu-Rays. There's a commentary on The Constant (the episode where Desmond becomes "unstuck" in time) and I was really looking forward to insight with the writers. Unfortunately it's also a commentary with the editor and so most of the discussion is about the editing of the episode. Now, I need to be crystal clear here: I actually found the commentary very interesting in its own right and you don't usually hear much about the process of editing a TV show. I guess I just wish that episode had two commentary tracks because I really want to hear more about the writing of it and the story of it. The only other commentary from Lindelof and Cuse is the season finale and they are obviously still completely exhausted from the race from the strike to the end of that episode. The extras on S4 aren't bad, but they are nowhere near as extensive as what came with S3. I guess if the actors strike during S5 maybe we'll get a LOT of writer's extras on the eventual Blu-Rays.

One I did quite like is you can watch the flash-forwards in chronological order, with snippets from the scripts shown as well. It's interesting to realize that A ) the Lost writers use foul language in the scripts for emphasis (I've read that before, but this really brings it home) and B ) how they tell the story in script form. It's an interesting balance between normal prose (where you carry everything via the words on the page) and giving directions to the actors, camera operators, and directors about how things should be played. I realized I'd buy the Lost scripts in book form. Especially in hopes that there's clues in there.

Anyway, set your DVR's! Tonight! Huzzah! There's a recap episode and the two episodes back to back so that's quite a bit of Lost.

Fair Enough I Suppose

Just got an email from Netflix.

As you may know, Blu-ray movies are more expensive than standard definition movies. As a result, we're going to start charging $1 a month (plus applicable taxes), in addition to your monthly membership charge, for unlimited access to Blu-ray movies.

I don't think this is unreasonable over all. I knew some sort of move was in the offing and I was afraid they were going to charge more for Blu-Ray than $1/month or even something worse like a per-disc surcharge which would have meant my Netflix bill would start fluctuating based on what we actually watched. I can eat $1/month and not even debate it. While I was reading my old Netflix posts I did have to giggle because the last email they sent me read:

We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint, you.

I'm not upset over this charge, and as I said I'm almost relieved that it wasn't higher. But you can't really say I'm "delighted" either. There's an old Dilbert strip where they are all in a meeting and the Pointy-Haired Boss says something along the lines "No bonuses this year because profits are low." In the next panel he says "Next up, the CEO is getting a massive raise because of great company performance." Then in the third panel he turns to his secretary and says "You were supposed to put an item about flu shots between those two." I'm sure I butchered the actual text, but the concept is there. I feel like Netflix was supposed to put something else between "Hey we're keeping Profiles" and "New Feature: Blu-Ray Tax!".

At any rate, I still like Netflix and I think Blu-Ray quality is easily worth the extra buck a month.

Heroes on Blu-Ray!

And lo, my resistance to Heroes Season 1 on HD-DVD has been rewarded:

Marking the rollout of the studio's first global release on Blu-ray(TM) will be the "Heroes: Season Two," which will debut beginning August 26, 2008.

The highly anticipated premier of the sophomore season of NBC's "Heroes" will be buoyed by the simultaneous debut of "Heroes Season One" on Blu-ray(TM).

From thedigitalbits.com (I don't think that's a permalink, the site seems strange about that. Look for the "early update 4/17/08")

Heroes season 2 wavered a little but in the (foreshortened by strike) end it was still pretty good television. And season one was the best show of last season, in my opinion. I almost bought Heroes S01 on HD-DVD several times, and the only holdup was that I could see HD-DVD wasn't the future. Heroes S01 on Blu-Ray? Oh yes please.

Now I just need something that will rip Blu-Ray to my iPhone. Notice to hardware vendors: I'll buy a Blu-Ray drive for TinyGod as soon as this happens. For reals.

PS3 and Universal Remotes

So now that Toshiba threw in the HD-DVD towel maybe you're thinking, "OK I should get myself a sweet, sweet PS3 and some Blu-Ray discs." But there's a problem and that problem is universal remotes. If you aren't using a universal remote than you're A ) foolish and B ) very likely a bachelor. I talked about my Harmony 880 remote before and there are newer Harmony remotes out there so I might not recommend buying an 880 today, but I really highly recommend the Harmony line.

The fly in the ointment is that the PS3 doesn't have an IR receiver. It uses Bluetooth for the Sony remote. The Sony remote works well enough, but once you achieve one remote nirvana having that second around is really irking. I recently found out that Nyko sells a IR dongle and small little remote for the PS3, called the Nyko BluWave ($14 at Amazon). You plug the dongle into an USB port on the PS3 and then teach the remote codes to the Harmony. (I did that last night, but I've since learned today that apparently you can PICK Nyko->BluWave as a device on the Harmony and it will download the codes.)

This isn't perfect. There are two minor problems and one fairly big one. The first is that a USB device can't turn on the PS3, so there's no power button on the Nyko remote. (The Sony Bluetooth remote does have a power button.) This isn't huge, it's only an issue if you already had a Blu-Ray disc in the drive and wanted to power it on from the couch, and don't have a controller within arm's reach.

The second minor problem is that the Nyko remote doesn't have all the buttons of the Sony remote - it lacks both the 10 key keypad and the colored buttons. I'm not sure this is a problem at all, I've never used those on my PS3. I'm a little worried about the Blue/Red/Yellow/Green buttons because I assume those are for Blu-Ray features and I might want them at some point in the future.

The much bigger problem is really annoying. If you have the USB dongle connected to the PS3 and you turn on the PS3 via a wireless controller the dongle apparently becomes controller 1. (The Sony Bluetooth remote somehow manages to always be controller 7.) The controller you just used to turn on the console ends up being controller 2. Most games won't play ball with this. Oddly enough if you turn the controller off and then back on it ends up being controller, but that's an awfully clunky workaround.

After some thought my current plan is to leave the dongle sitting by the PS3 and only plug it in when playing a Blu-Ray. Figure I'm up there turning the console on anyway, so it's not a big deal to connect the dongle at that time.

Given all that, personally I think it's worth $14 to let my Harmony control disc playback. I can't quite unconditionally recommend the BluWave, but I guess you can weigh the issues listed above versus the issue of having to use two remotes (the horror) to watch movies.

Update 2/22/08: I realized today that if you're in a game on the PS3 that you can reassign a controller ID. There's a menu that comes up when you press the PS button. This is where you can turn off the controller or the system, or quit the game and return to the Cross Media Bar (XMB). There's also an option called "Controller Options" and from there you can reassign the controller ID. So now I leave the USB dongle plugged in, but I can grab a controller, start a game and then correct the whole controller 2 thing. Still a pain, but better than having to turn the controller off and on again.