Here are some options. Anyone care to comment?
Having received little or no comments, I will try to evaluate these options myself to the extend I have access to the hardware and or software. The are other options available as well and I encourage you to google to your hearts content.
The solution is a single room solution only and consists of five devices: A Hitachi TV, a Yamaha Receiver, a LG Blu-ray player, a Pioneer DVD player, and a Toshiba HDD Recorder. Challenges are provided by the Hitachi TV which does not provide discrete for HDMI inputs and by the Toshiba HDD Recorder which does not provide discrete Power On and Off.
A very common paradigm is the Device vs Activity. Think of a device as the TV, DVD player, the single remote. An Activity is what we really want to do. Whether it is watching TV or listening to a CD. To be able to watch a DVD, we normally would have a number of steps to perform, turn all the devices, set up all the inputs, and determine which device controls the volume. A remote for an Activity would be different from a remote for a Device. We may want to press play or stop on the DVD or volume up, down or mute on our receiver or television.
Activity-based remote controls implement this paradigm with various levels of success including which device has already been turned on and which device still needs to be turned on.
The solutions described below are the solutions I tried myself. There are other solutions as well which may be as good or better than the ones I describe here.
I still hope that others will contribute to this thread and share their experience.
(1) Griffin Beacon - Bluetooth based
URL[Link: griffintechnology.com]http://www.dijit.com/Note: The concept is very similar to Gear4 UnityRemote.
(2) Harmony Link - IP basedURL
[Link: logitech.com](3) iRule / iTach - IP based
URLhttp://www.iruleathome.com/http://www.globalcache.com/(4) DemoPad(5) TouchControl
URLhttp://www.touchapptech.com(6) Command Fusion
URL
http://www.commandfusion.com/
Last edited by PS2 on November 9, 2011 00:16.