Saturday, September 24, 2005

I got my RC9800i. Did you?

I recently bought Philips RC9800i Home controller to control all the A/V devices and I am really happy about it after using it for about 2 weeks. Not to mention that I had 5 remotes that I was switching between them all the time. I was initiallly deciding between

1. Logitech Harmony 880 Advanced universal remote
2. Philips RC9800i
3. Philips TSU7000 home control panel

I didn't choose Harmony because it is not future proof and didn't like the big huge remote. But this is the best remote in $200 range. I would have loved TSU7000 but didn't want to spend > $700 bucks for a universal remote. Also, I wanted a simple device without the customizability and programmability as I know I would have time to do anything with it.

I got my RC9800i for $400 bucks which was the lowest on the web at time of my purchase. I initially had trouble setting up the devices but after few iterations mastered it. What I love about it:
1. Form factor
2. Activity based and ease of use
3. Out of the box experience is great and my firmware update etc went w/o a hitch
4. Comes with 802.11b Wireless support and uPnP support. I can connect this to Philips Media Manager and download Pictures/Songs etc to the device
5. Allows Multi-Room/Multi Device configurations.
6. I belive I could use RF Extender to extend the range if I want to

But I still have few issues to sort out which could very well be bugs in the product:
1. It does not recognize my PMM even though it successfully connects to my WAP. Opened up bunch of ports as suggested, turned off the firewall and did all the standard tricks. But no avail
2. It does not turn off my DVD player when I switch to watching other activity.

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