A Remote Like No Other
From the start we set out to build the best remote. We chose the iPhone because it is rich with just the right technology and they seem to be everywhere - a near perfect control and connectivity solution for everyone. We knew there had to be a better solution than the basket of remotes or difficult to use universal remotes.
A Common Set of Problems:
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Remotes always seem to get lost - they seem to crawl between couch cushions
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Remotes are way too difficult to program so many of us resort to the “basket of remotes” solution.
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As our home entertainment system grows so grows the basket.
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Remotes have way too many buttons, many of which never get used, causing (cl)utter confusion
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Simple tasks are convoluted, like switching from the Blu-ray to the Satellite box input—press the wrong button, and your system could be rendered useless.
Our Mission is Clear:
Build a super easy-to-use but powerful, whole house remote, that controls all your equipment and never gets lost.
Here’s how we did it:
Control All Your Equipment
Control It All is designed to work with all your equipment. We deliver on this goal by including a commercial grade remote control code database that incorporates over fifty thousand codes covering 200 brands. Given number of brands and types of equipment, no remote can achieve 100% coverage, so we incorporated an easy to use learning function that captures codes for devices that aren’t covered by our database. With our robust code database and learning you truly can control it all.
Eyes Free Gestures
Once you go Eyes Free, you’ll never look back. Taking full advantage of multi-touch gesture technology, we deliver a truly unique experience. Adjusting the volume is analogous to turning a knob using the thumb and index finger. Channel and page navigation is performed via swipes, entering and exiting the guide is done via taps. Collectively, gestures inject a little fun into the normally mundane and provide a truly unique control experience.
Whole House Control
AV equipment is rapidly proliferating. It’s not uncommon to find televisions, satellite receivers, and Blu-ray players in our family rooms, media rooms, game rooms, and bedrooms.
Control It All is designed to, well, control it all, without requiring you to be in the room you’re actually controlling. Turn down the subwoofer in the upstairs media room. Turn everything off when it’s bedtime. Simply select the room and control whatever components are in the selected room.
Super Easy to Setup
Ease of use starts with setup and continues through to day-to-day use. The most daunting setup problems with conventional remotes clearly lie in finding the right device codes. Most remotes require you to look up codes in a manual; others require you to plug your remote into your computer and look them up online.
Really? Search through a manual or connect to my computer to program my remote, it’s 2011 there must be a better way!
By including a robust commercial grade code database, we obsolete the need for user manual code lookup. With Control It All the codes are “in there” just enter your device type and brand and you’re off to the races.
Activity and Device Views
When using a remote we’re either: 1) focused on activity centric content control–pause that scene, play it louder, or 2) focused on device setup—changing the input, adjusting color, picture size, etc.
Activity Views provide simple but powerful views focused on activity centric content control. Only those buttons associated with the activity are presented, which makes for easy to understand intuitive user interface.
Device Views cover device setup, by providing control over more esoteric functions associated with a particular device. Together Activity Views with Device Views give you the best of both worlds–ease of use and greater control.
Favorites
Despite having hundreds of channels, we all seem to gravitate to a handful of tried and true channels that we watch regularly.
Control It All’s Favorites View makes it super easy to get to your favorites. And, because they’re on your phone, you’ll never have to worry about someone replacing your favorite ESPN channel with Nickelodeon.
What you Need and Don’t Need
Since ease of use was a paramount design goal, we made sure the hardware setup was as effortless as possible. In fact, there really is no hardware setup. Just plug it in. That’s it!
Since we have some extra space, it may be helpful to understand what you don’t need:
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No Wifi
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No Ethernet
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No Networking
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No wires or connections whatsoever
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And this is Just the Beginning…
Control It All is the first of many products and features to be announced in 2011 and years to come. We trust that you will enjoy it and find it helpful in taking back control of your increasingly complicated information dense environment.