So you have your PS3, your Harmony One remote, your nice large flat screen and a kickin 5.1 sound system you are ready to rock some Blu-Ray action right? Wrong! The biggest oversight or attempt to weasel another 30 bucks out of consumers is the lack of IR on the PS3. The issue for the uninitiated is that 99.9% of universal remotes only offer IR functionality (some offer RF too) and there are no other Bluetooth remotes available for the PS3 other than the one Sony offers. Cute Sony…. very cute. So what’s someone to do “2 Remote it?” Well for the past months this is how I had been functioning. Not ideal but it worked. Some issues included the following:
- No backlight on PS3 remote so in the dark functionality pain in the proverbial neck.
- Keeping around 2 remotes = one is bound to disappear
- 2 sets of batteries to keep handy
For months people have been offering all sorts of strange half baked solutions which would translate IR to controller commands but alas they all failed on 2 VERY important pieces:
- None could send the power on commands to turn on the PS3 with the IR remote.
- None could send the power off commands as done via the BT remote.
Both of these are deal breakers when it comes to having a completely 1 touch on and off provided by remotes like the Logitech Harmony series. Enter the IR2BT. The IR2BT excels where other solutions such as the
Nyko Blu-Wave fail. So how does it work?
The simplicity is that the IR2Bt works by just translating all IR commands into the BTÂ equivalent. Seems simple enough right? Yep it is that simple. Does it work? YES! Simply browse to the accessories menu register BD remote control, power on the IR2BT , press and hold the number 2 on your remote (if using a Harmony you may need to select the IR2BT as the active device first). After a second or two you will see the pairing process happen. That’s it. Works as advertised, I am now able to power on and off using my Harmony One with no problems.
Highly recommended. The only issues you’ll have with at this point is getting ahold of one. I was lucky enough to get ahold of one in the first batch to be released, however it’s now several weeks of wait time to get ahold of one and they are only producing around 100 a week. Bleh. Hopefully production will ramp up as I can see this as almost a necessity for anyone wanting to increase the WAF. I can wholeheartedly recommend the IR2BT. Great solution to simple problem.
You can order your own IR2BT straight from
IR2BT.
Tags: bluetooth, Harmony, infrared to bluetooth, InfraredtoBluetooth, IR, IR2BT, IR2BT Review, PS3, remote, universal remote
This entry was posted
on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 8:22 pm and is filed under PS3, Reviews, Video.
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