I'm kind of a sucker for computer hardware and especially things like keyboards and mice. Since I've blown almost $1000 USD moving from one gadget to another, I'd thought I'd share my experiences and hopefully save people a few dollars here and there.
I will comment on 4 pieces of hardware in chronological order of which I purchased them:
1. Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 (keyboard + mouse)
2. IRMan + Sony remote
3. Logitech MX Air
4. Apple Wireless Keyboard
* These images are not taken by me, but just as a reference for visual aid
1. Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000
When I transitioned from Vista MCE to MediaPortal, I had a Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 from Microsoft, and it worked fine in MCE. The media buttons did what they were supposed to do, and I didn't have to do any keymapping or configuration.
It's a Bluetooth set, so there are no line-of-sight issues with things like IR remotes and your Bluetooth dongle can be inserted behind your HTPC so you won't have any protusions in your HTPC case.
I generally enjoyed using this keyboard but the size is a little too large. To do anything with the keyboard you have to use two hands, especially if you attempt to use the psuedo touchpad on the right. You'll end up having the entire keyboard on your lap while you attempt to navigate MCE, or anything in Windows for that matter. It felt clunky and awkward. Also, the pressure sensitive keys at the top, while very stylish and earn 10/10 in design, are pretty bad to use. They have absolutely no tactile feedback so most of the time you don't know if you've pressed them or not. The key I used most with MP is probably ESC, and most of the time I accidentally graze the key and the key would be activated, or worse... F1 and the annoying Windows Help will pop up.
Using it with MP was no brainer, it's a keyboard. However unlike MCE, MP out of the box is heavily focused on keyboard shortcuts. This is not a jab at MP's design, it's just different. Whereas MCE could be controlled using the dedicated media buttons on the keyboard, MP cannot, at least not without digging around the mapping. Thus, you could do things in MP with a single keypress and it meant that you didn't have to wrangle with the MCE keyboard on your lap. I decided to move on to something more smaller and couch-potato friendly...
2. IRMan + Sony IR remote
Digging the IRman receiver out of the box of obsolete computer crap I keep in my storage was a couple hours of fun, but I used this IR receiver many years ago in attempt to make WinAmp controllable from my bed while I studied for exams in university. It's just a generic IR receiver which you can purchase online nowadays for a couple bucks, and combined with some IR mapping software (I used Girder 4.0) you can take any TV/DVD/VCR etc. remote and control your PC with it.
Now let's just say that while something might have been wrong, and IR/Girder users can help me out here, was the ridiculous amount of lag I would get when I pressed a button on the remote to when something would actually happen in MP. For instance, just scrolling up and down a folder in MP would produce unusable behavior. If I pressed the Up button for about 2s (which I had mapped to the Up arrow key) instead of stopping the scrolling when I released the button, on MP it would still scroll for another additional 5s. This was similar behavior across all the buttons, so if I held down play, it would send repeated Play/Pause commands to MP and I would have to wait until it stopped going crazy before I could do another button press. Needless to say, spamming MP with commands like that made it crash more than once.
If I used a keyboard (wired or Bluetooth), the button presses were responsive and MP's behavior was as expected. I suspect that because my IRman runs through a serial-USB converter, there is some lag, but because of the awful experience I had with it, I unplugged the IRman and threw it back in the closet. I did some testing in Girder and it seemed like when I pressed a button, the response was instant and I could see the IR codes scrolling through the log window without delay, but in MP it just seemed to go downhill.
Ideally, if the IR receiver & remote could respond instantaneously, this would be a great option. But for me it just didn't happen this way at all and I didn't want to spend hours trying to see what was wrong.
3. Logitech MX Air
This mouse is dead sexy. I'm sure any gadget freak out there has probably been tempted more than once to buy this mouse, and needless so say that I did myself. Out of the box and using with Vista MCE, it behaves as described in the manual. The FreeSpace technology uses hand motions to simulate play back controls. So for instance if I wanted to control the volume, I hold down the VOL key and tilt the mouse up or down to increase or decrease the volume. To fast-forward or rewind a video, I hold down the Play/Pause key and rotate my wrist so the mouse does a circlular motion. It's pretty nifty, but you do look odd doing it. Functionality wise, it does take some getting used to and for about a week I tried it with MCE and just didn't get used to it. I guess I'm old school and when I want the video to skip, I press a button, not rotate my wrist.
In MediaPortal, none of the FreeSpace gestures work out of the box. I'm sure there are hacks out there to get the gestures working with MP, but again I didn't want to spend hours hacking through the plugins and interfaces to get it to work. I also didn't feel like the gestures were the best thing to control a HTPC with. It just seemed like Logitech was trying to be different just for the sake of being different. In fact a normal remote or keyboard can do the job a whole lot simpler with just button presses rather than twirling your hand in predefined motions. Definitely a crowd pleaser though, if you're into that kind of thing.
As a mouse, it's also not the best to use. The left and right mouse buttons are very long due to the mouse design, and it means that when you switch from gestures to putting the mouse down on the table, you have to readjust your hand. Your fingeers need to slide up the mouse to get a proper position to click. Also, the mouse wheel is a pressure sensitive strip. For those that are used to wheels, this strip provides no tactile feedback as to how you're scrolling, and again it's something a user needs to adjust to. By default, the scroll wheel is cruise control enabled which means that it will scroll even after your finger has left the strip. Some people may like this, but I prefer precise wheel clicks.
This was probably the most expensive gadget I tried, and ultimately the one I was most disappointed with. It's now just a mouse for my HTPC as I've totally given up on the gestures.
4. Apple Wireless Keyboard
As mentioned previously, MP relies heavily on keyboard shortcuts. In fact if you use things like remote controls and gamepads (I intend to try out the Wii remote in the future just for kicks) you miss out on a lot of functionality. To most users I'm sure they won't need that control but for people like me, having things like aspect ratios, zoom, volume, the ability to jump to specific time in a video is paramount.
After trying out the gadgets above, I felt that going back to the basics and having a wireless keyboard would probably be the best. I started searching for wireless keyboards that 1. were smaller and 2. had the basic QWERTY layout without a number pad or media controls. Lo and behold, the first thing that came up with I typed "Wireless Keyboard" in Google was the Apple keyboard.
This thing is damn sexy, minimalist and looks completely functional and even though it's just a plain old vanilla keyboard that you could pick up from any computer shop for $5, Apple always manages to design it so that it looks sophisticated on your coffee table. While the Apple keyboard falls into the same category as the MS keyboard, this one by far more aesthically pleasing. Even my girlfriend couldn't resist and took a picture of the setup - she didn't do that with any of the gadgets mentioned above.
Out of the box, and the moment you pair it with your BT dongle, all the keys work. Even the Apple Command button is automatically functioning as the Windows key. I didn't have install a single driver.
Needless to say, being a keyboard, it works fine with MP. Useablility is great, mostly because of it's small size. All the keys have a very good tactile response so there's no accidental presses. It just works, and by far I think this is the best control for MP thus far. At the moment, if people were looking for a wireless control of their HTPC, I'd recommend the Apple Wireless Keyboard. Inclusion of media keys would be nice, but they're just gimmicks and would detract from the minimalist design. Volume control is also lacking on the Apple Keyboard, but consider that most of the time your first reflex would be to reach for your TV control anyways. I typically leave my HTPC at full volume and use the TV's volume control instead - keep in mind this is how your set-top DVD player behaves as well.
Well that about sums up my experiences, I hope this will help some people in the purchasing decisions over the holidays. If you have any comments please don't hesitate to leave them here.
I will comment on 4 pieces of hardware in chronological order of which I purchased them:
1. Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 (keyboard + mouse)
2. IRMan + Sony remote
3. Logitech MX Air
4. Apple Wireless Keyboard
* These images are not taken by me, but just as a reference for visual aid
1. Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000
When I transitioned from Vista MCE to MediaPortal, I had a Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 from Microsoft, and it worked fine in MCE. The media buttons did what they were supposed to do, and I didn't have to do any keymapping or configuration.
It's a Bluetooth set, so there are no line-of-sight issues with things like IR remotes and your Bluetooth dongle can be inserted behind your HTPC so you won't have any protusions in your HTPC case.
I generally enjoyed using this keyboard but the size is a little too large. To do anything with the keyboard you have to use two hands, especially if you attempt to use the psuedo touchpad on the right. You'll end up having the entire keyboard on your lap while you attempt to navigate MCE, or anything in Windows for that matter. It felt clunky and awkward. Also, the pressure sensitive keys at the top, while very stylish and earn 10/10 in design, are pretty bad to use. They have absolutely no tactile feedback so most of the time you don't know if you've pressed them or not. The key I used most with MP is probably ESC, and most of the time I accidentally graze the key and the key would be activated, or worse... F1 and the annoying Windows Help will pop up.
Using it with MP was no brainer, it's a keyboard. However unlike MCE, MP out of the box is heavily focused on keyboard shortcuts. This is not a jab at MP's design, it's just different. Whereas MCE could be controlled using the dedicated media buttons on the keyboard, MP cannot, at least not without digging around the mapping. Thus, you could do things in MP with a single keypress and it meant that you didn't have to wrangle with the MCE keyboard on your lap. I decided to move on to something more smaller and couch-potato friendly...
2. IRMan + Sony IR remote
Digging the IRman receiver out of the box of obsolete computer crap I keep in my storage was a couple hours of fun, but I used this IR receiver many years ago in attempt to make WinAmp controllable from my bed while I studied for exams in university. It's just a generic IR receiver which you can purchase online nowadays for a couple bucks, and combined with some IR mapping software (I used Girder 4.0) you can take any TV/DVD/VCR etc. remote and control your PC with it.
Now let's just say that while something might have been wrong, and IR/Girder users can help me out here, was the ridiculous amount of lag I would get when I pressed a button on the remote to when something would actually happen in MP. For instance, just scrolling up and down a folder in MP would produce unusable behavior. If I pressed the Up button for about 2s (which I had mapped to the Up arrow key) instead of stopping the scrolling when I released the button, on MP it would still scroll for another additional 5s. This was similar behavior across all the buttons, so if I held down play, it would send repeated Play/Pause commands to MP and I would have to wait until it stopped going crazy before I could do another button press. Needless to say, spamming MP with commands like that made it crash more than once.
If I used a keyboard (wired or Bluetooth), the button presses were responsive and MP's behavior was as expected. I suspect that because my IRman runs through a serial-USB converter, there is some lag, but because of the awful experience I had with it, I unplugged the IRman and threw it back in the closet. I did some testing in Girder and it seemed like when I pressed a button, the response was instant and I could see the IR codes scrolling through the log window without delay, but in MP it just seemed to go downhill.
Ideally, if the IR receiver & remote could respond instantaneously, this would be a great option. But for me it just didn't happen this way at all and I didn't want to spend hours trying to see what was wrong.
3. Logitech MX Air
This mouse is dead sexy. I'm sure any gadget freak out there has probably been tempted more than once to buy this mouse, and needless so say that I did myself. Out of the box and using with Vista MCE, it behaves as described in the manual. The FreeSpace technology uses hand motions to simulate play back controls. So for instance if I wanted to control the volume, I hold down the VOL key and tilt the mouse up or down to increase or decrease the volume. To fast-forward or rewind a video, I hold down the Play/Pause key and rotate my wrist so the mouse does a circlular motion. It's pretty nifty, but you do look odd doing it. Functionality wise, it does take some getting used to and for about a week I tried it with MCE and just didn't get used to it. I guess I'm old school and when I want the video to skip, I press a button, not rotate my wrist.
In MediaPortal, none of the FreeSpace gestures work out of the box. I'm sure there are hacks out there to get the gestures working with MP, but again I didn't want to spend hours hacking through the plugins and interfaces to get it to work. I also didn't feel like the gestures were the best thing to control a HTPC with. It just seemed like Logitech was trying to be different just for the sake of being different. In fact a normal remote or keyboard can do the job a whole lot simpler with just button presses rather than twirling your hand in predefined motions. Definitely a crowd pleaser though, if you're into that kind of thing.
As a mouse, it's also not the best to use. The left and right mouse buttons are very long due to the mouse design, and it means that when you switch from gestures to putting the mouse down on the table, you have to readjust your hand. Your fingeers need to slide up the mouse to get a proper position to click. Also, the mouse wheel is a pressure sensitive strip. For those that are used to wheels, this strip provides no tactile feedback as to how you're scrolling, and again it's something a user needs to adjust to. By default, the scroll wheel is cruise control enabled which means that it will scroll even after your finger has left the strip. Some people may like this, but I prefer precise wheel clicks.
This was probably the most expensive gadget I tried, and ultimately the one I was most disappointed with. It's now just a mouse for my HTPC as I've totally given up on the gestures.
4. Apple Wireless Keyboard
As mentioned previously, MP relies heavily on keyboard shortcuts. In fact if you use things like remote controls and gamepads (I intend to try out the Wii remote in the future just for kicks) you miss out on a lot of functionality. To most users I'm sure they won't need that control but for people like me, having things like aspect ratios, zoom, volume, the ability to jump to specific time in a video is paramount.
After trying out the gadgets above, I felt that going back to the basics and having a wireless keyboard would probably be the best. I started searching for wireless keyboards that 1. were smaller and 2. had the basic QWERTY layout without a number pad or media controls. Lo and behold, the first thing that came up with I typed "Wireless Keyboard" in Google was the Apple keyboard.
This thing is damn sexy, minimalist and looks completely functional and even though it's just a plain old vanilla keyboard that you could pick up from any computer shop for $5, Apple always manages to design it so that it looks sophisticated on your coffee table. While the Apple keyboard falls into the same category as the MS keyboard, this one by far more aesthically pleasing. Even my girlfriend couldn't resist and took a picture of the setup - she didn't do that with any of the gadgets mentioned above.
Out of the box, and the moment you pair it with your BT dongle, all the keys work. Even the Apple Command button is automatically functioning as the Windows key. I didn't have install a single driver.
Needless to say, being a keyboard, it works fine with MP. Useablility is great, mostly because of it's small size. All the keys have a very good tactile response so there's no accidental presses. It just works, and by far I think this is the best control for MP thus far. At the moment, if people were looking for a wireless control of their HTPC, I'd recommend the Apple Wireless Keyboard. Inclusion of media keys would be nice, but they're just gimmicks and would detract from the minimalist design. Volume control is also lacking on the Apple Keyboard, but consider that most of the time your first reflex would be to reach for your TV control anyways. I typically leave my HTPC at full volume and use the TV's volume control instead - keep in mind this is how your set-top DVD player behaves as well.
Well that about sums up my experiences, I hope this will help some people in the purchasing decisions over the holidays. If you have any comments please don't hesitate to leave them here.
Germany
