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any consensus on which remote works best out of the box ?

Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2010 11:14 am
by lobosolo
hey all. i'm trying to find a nice easy to use remote for my new Zotac frontend. i have a remote that came with my hauppague hvr-2250 and i would say out of the box 80% of the buttons work. i also have generic usb "mce" remote off ebay and only about 40% of the buttons work.

is there any remote that i can buy, plug in and select in myth. and it will just work without any editing ?

if you guys could ever do a show about fine tuning your remote settings it would be a great help to us newbies who still struggle with it. i heard one of you talk about a frontend restart button, but i never heard how to set it up. :?

Re: any consensus on which remote works best out of the box ?

Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2010 1:04 pm
by marc
Timely question. I would also like some tips.
It appears that a majority of the MCE remotes are actually HID devices emulating keyboards and mouse buttons. There is a way to config these things but it is a huge pain in the rear.

It's very difficult to determine what available remotes actually work well with Mythtv unless you filter the "newegg" reviews for mythtv and/or linux.

The POS that I recently purchased was a Diamond "green button" remote. Gah, what a dissapointment. This espessially since I bought two! Fortunately I was able to sell one of them to guy at my work because he uses Vista. Good for him, bad for me.

So, I second this request!

Re: any consensus on which remote works best out of the box ?

Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2010 1:26 pm
by lobosolo
i almost forgot, here is the remote i have that almost works, like i said about 80% of the buttons work, the important buttons all work. the transports and numbers all work. the color buttons and a few other do not.

http://store.hauppauge.com/hardware2.as ... mce_remote

Re: any consensus on which remote works best out of the box ?

Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2010 6:00 pm
by marc
Nice piece of kit!

You say 80% of the keys work perfectly. Would these include the pause / play / fast forward / rewind and num keys?
If you run irw do you receive output for each of the keys? If so, it may just be a configuration issue and using a config for mythtv.

Have you tried creating your own config with irrecord?

I know you don't want to configure but did you try to set it up with lirc?

Also, I notice it has a ir transmitter.

If all the keys will work with lirc, I'll buy one or two!

Re: any consensus on which remote works best out of the box ?

Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2010 6:38 pm
by pla
lobosolo wrote:hey all. i'm trying to find a nice easy to use remote for my new Zotac frontend. i have a remote that came with my hauppague hvr-2250 and i would say out of the box 80% of the buttons work. i also have generic usb "mce" remote off ebay and only about 40% of the buttons work.

is there any remote that i can buy, plug in and select in myth. and it will just work without any editing ?
I use StreamZap USB remotes. Nothing fancy but works fine.
StreamZap USB Remote Control
StreamZap USB Remote Control
StreamZap.jpg (8.02 KiB) Viewed 10727 times
Rock on, PLA

Re: any consensus on which remote works best out of the box ?

Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2010 6:45 pm
by lobosolo
marc wrote:Nice piece of kit!

You say 80% of the keys work perfectly. Would these include the pause / play / fast forward / rewind and num keys?
If you run irw do you receive output for each of the keys? If so, it may just be a configuration issue and using a config for mythtv.

Have you tried creating your own config with irrecord?

I know you don't want to configure but did you try to set it up with lirc?

Also, I notice it has a ir transmitter.

If all the keys will work with lirc, I'll buy one or two!
yes all the transport buttons work properly the only buttons that dont work are power,rec, the 4 color buttons and the 4 buttons under the mute button. maybe i answered my own question ? perhaps i had my own best solution all along.

im still a newb at this, so i never test it with lirc

Re: any consensus on which remote works best out of the box ?

Posted: Wed Jun 30, 2010 6:16 am
by Patrick
The M$ MCE line is the best deal. Works out of the box without fussing. They're basically Phillips rebranded remotes:
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MCE_Remote

The only negative is that they're not selling these new any longer. You can find them on Ebay for roughly $15-$30. I have two. What's also nice about these is that if you have a harmony 880 remote the codes are already in there. Also the receiver has 2 ir blasters built into it.

Re: any consensus on which remote works best out of the box ?

Posted: Wed Jun 30, 2010 12:16 pm
by marc
Stream Zap eh? I'll have to look into that. Thanks pla!

Pat, I'm hesitant to jump for any "MCE" branded anything these days after getting stuck with these Diamond brand remotes. I will only go on someone else's mythtv referral from now on! So, I'm listening with my one good ear,

Re: any consensus on which remote works best out of the box ?

Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2010 12:27 am
by perato
The Sony PS3 bluetooth remote works so long as you have bluetooth in your frontend computer. I followed the instructions on the MythTV Wiki which refers to the XBMC wiki.

BTW, how do you like the HVR-2250? The card works but I can't get the kernel modules to load quickly. It takes about 15 seconds for the HVR-2250 kernel modules (namely saa7164) to load. The only workaround I figured out is to rearrange when different modules are loaded allowing me to log in and load the window manager while saa7164 wastes time.

Re: any consensus on which remote works best out of the box ?

Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2010 9:24 pm
by marc
I too had this working for a while and was very pleased but for one small thing. My batteries died too quick. :(

So, I gave up on it and returned it to my PS3
perato wrote:The Sony PS3 bluetooth remote works so long as you have bluetooth in your frontend computer. I followed the instructions on the MythTV Wiki which refers to the XBMC wiki.

BTW, how do you like the HVR-2250? The card works but I can't get the kernel modules to load quickly. It takes about 15 seconds for the HVR-2250 kernel modules (namely saa7164) to load. The only workaround I figured out is to rearrange when different modules are loaded allowing me to log in and load the window manager while saa7164 wastes time.

Re: any consensus on which remote works best out of the box ?

Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 3:38 pm
by mikeh
I bought one of these for my 360. Not sure if it is compatible with the PC MCE remotes, but it is dirt cheap. Works great with my 360.

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.24857