This is indeed a very cool use for the iPronto, one that I had not really considered before. I see that you already posted this discovery four months ago to the forum. At first, when I read your reply, it seemed that this couldn't be what Philips has in mind regarding the "Connected Planet" vision. But, the more I think about it, the more it seems that Web pages are the answer. But, I would like to take this concept and extend it further.
Imagine that each of your A/V devices is networked into your home network and each of these devices is running its own mini Web server. The mini Web server isn't hard to imagine--my Integra DTR 7.3 receiver has an Ethernet port, and a port scan demonstrates that it is running a Web server, one that unfortunately provides virtually no content. More and more A/V devices are becoming available that have Ethernet and/or wireless, such as Philip's Streamium product set. Now, what would be the content hosted on an A/V device's Web pages? Well, everything that is needed to control the device and get status information! For instance, imagine that we have a CD/DVD player with a network connection. Using this network connection, it can connect to CDDB (or FreeDB) to get disk information. The product that I am describing here happens to already exist--it's one of the Streamium products (which has many more capabilities, but let's just consider the CD/DVD capability). And here's where we go into the potential future: along with being able to connect to CDDB, the CD/DVD player is running a tiny Web server which hosts pages that can be used to control the device. By controlling the device, I mean it provides at least the following things on the Web page:
1. Standard controls found on the device's remote. 2. Status information (track, time, speed, etc.) 3. Album and track information if available (artist, track name, etc.)
Just imagine it--this advancement, one that the iPronto is quite suited to handle, would take remotes to the "next level". Instead of a remote being a device that just sends information (i.e. IR commands), it will also be a device that receives information from A/V devices. In the past (and currently), the only way to get information about the current status of a CD player is to look at the LCD or, if available, the status as sent to the video output connected to a TV screen. Both of these have disadvantages, however. To read the LCD screen, the user most likely has to get up and go over to the CD player. And for the video output to work, the TV has to be turned on, an inconvenience when the user is just listening to music. But, the iPronto (and related devices) is the user's remote and travels with the user. It is the perfect device for both sending and receiving information. Oh, and I might add that a Web page is not generally limited to width issues (i.e. number of characters), as is frequently the case for an LCD or on-screen display.
I really hope that this, or something similar, is part of Philip's plan for the iPronto. I've wanted the "receiving" capability when it comes to remotes for years now.
