Universal Remote Control – XSight Touch from AR
I guess most people faces the same problem as me – too many remote controllers, too many equipments. If you are having more than three remote controls to enjoy that nice movie or TV show, probably you should consider getting a universal remote, that is, a single remote that controls multiple electronics – TV, cable setup box, multimedia player, Blue-ray player, etc.
I just got my first universal remote control – Acoustic Research ARRX18G XSight 18-Device Universal Learning Remote Control with Touchscreen Color Display. Well, you might say “huh?!” when you hear the brand as you might probably be more familiar with Logitech Harmony Remotes like the Logitech Harmony One Universal Remote with Color Touchscreen or Logitech Harmony 1100 Universal Remote with Color Touch Screen. The XSight Touch universal remote is on sale so I guess it is no harm getting one just for the fun of it.
XSight Touch Universal Remote Features
The Acoustic Research XSight Touch features:
- Full-color touch screen
- One touch control entertainment activities
- Add advanced features via EZ-RC website
- Controls up to 18 devices
- Backlit buttons
- Rechargeable battery
- One-touch access to activities
The package contents
The XSight Touch came with a setup cd, setup guide, battery, power adaptor and the charging dock. The battery seems to be one of the standard camera model battery so getting a replacement in Singapore shouldn’t be that hard.
Setting it up
Setting up the device is pretty straight forward, you can add the device either on the remote itself or through its companion website – EZ-RC. When using the remote to set up, you simply have to chose the type of device (e.g. TV, multimedia) and the brand (e.g. Sony, Bose) and it will present a short list of remote controls set for you to test if it works. This is unlike the Logitech Universal Remotes that require you to use the PC in order to configure your remote.
If you want a more exact remote control match, you can do it via the EZ-RC website. From there, you can configure the exact remote for your device. Wonderful! I have configured it to control my Sony BRAVIA TV, Apple TV and A.C. Ryan Playon!HD! Should try and configure it to control my iRobot Roomba 560 too.
Conclusion
Nice remote! It controls up to 18 devices. It has got a color touch screen for easy navigation. All my devices can easily be found on EZ-RC website and easily added to the XSight remote.
One down point is that it only supports Windows Operating System. And yeah, I need to boot into my Bootcamp partition to configure it. Any ideas how can I make it work on my OS X Lion?
