Saturday, October 23, 2010

Harmony Remote for Logitech Revue

Ok, so things have moved on quite a bit since my last posts. I am now working for Logitech in the Digital Home department which is responsible for the Logitech Revue (with Google TV) launched this week. I spent the last 6 months mostly working on Harmony Remote, which is the app you can download from Android Market Place to control the Revue. The app allows you to send Google TV commands to your Revue meaning anything you can do with the keyboard and mouse pad can be achieved on your phone too.

But there is more. The app also allows you to start the 'Watch Google TV' activity (switch on your TV, STB and AVR in one tap) and control all the IR devices you have set up through Revue. It is also easy to access some IR commands that are not on the Revue keyboard by default (such as Aspect Ratio). The app has a voice search command using Google's voice translation API. Tap on the microphone and say something into your phone. The app will then convert your search into text and send it to the Google TV search bar.

Finally, there is a somewhat hidden feature that people at Google like to call 'flinging'. Harmony Remote hooks into the Send mechanism on Android meaning that any app that supports Send or Share can send the item you are sharing through Harmony Remote directly to your Revue box. The easiest way to see this in action is through the YouTube app. Long press on a video, tap 'share' and then 'Harmony Remote' and within a few seconds the video is sent to Revue and will start playing on your TV. The cool thing about this is that sending works with Harmony IR system in the Revue and so it knows whether your TV is on or off. In other words, Harmony Remote will switch on your TV if it needs to, and then plays the video.

You can also send URLs from the browser on the phone. Long tap on the URL at the top of the browser, choose Share and then Harmony Remote. The page you are viewing will then show up on your Google TV.

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