Like many of us, I've long wanted a way to control Kaleidescape from my iPhone. Finally, such a product exists... Remotescape, from a new company by the same name. It's a remarkable product in many senses and certainly fills a gap in the market - a portable, handheld, touchscreen remote for a fraction of the price of existing systems, and being delivered on a platform that many Kaleidescape owners already own and enjoy.
So does it live up to the full potential, does it really rival Crestron, AMX, high-end Protos and the like? Yes in some ways, no in others, but it will indeed work very well for many users and certainly show what is possible as this product and company matures. And it does some things very very well. I think many Kaleidescape users will be enamored of it and will say it is very much what they've been waiting for.
I've been lucky enough to be beta-testing this app for the last several months, and it's very slick. It looks very much like an app that Kaleidescape itself might have produced... and with good reason. One of the founders of Remotescape is Dan Collens, who is also one of the original founders and Director of Engineering at Kaleidescape.
So, what does it do?
Connections & Setup
So does it live up to the full potential, does it really rival Crestron, AMX, high-end Protos and the like? Yes in some ways, no in others, but it will indeed work very well for many users and certainly show what is possible as this product and company matures. And it does some things very very well. I think many Kaleidescape users will be enamored of it and will say it is very much what they've been waiting for.
I've been lucky enough to be beta-testing this app for the last several months, and it's very slick. It looks very much like an app that Kaleidescape itself might have produced... and with good reason. One of the founders of Remotescape is Dan Collens, who is also one of the original founders and Director of Engineering at Kaleidescape.
So, what does it do?
It's a relatively full-featured device-specific remote for your Kaleidescape, offering both movie and music control in a nicely-laid out user interface with a touchscreen interface. On the movie side it can act as a handheld remote while you're watching a movie or interacting with the user interface, featuring many things that were only previously possible with far more expensive and complicated touch-screen remotes.
Maybe more importantly to some, are its capabilities on the Kaleidescape music side. In many (but not all) installations, it can act as a complete remote-replacement for the music system, giving you a way to control music in rooms where you have a music player but no full-featured wall panel or remote. In fact, it's so good at this function, that it may well compel owners to add some music zones to their house now that they can easily control those zones from an iPod touch in those rooms, or from their iPhones that they may always carry with them.
Maybe more importantly to some, are its capabilities on the Kaleidescape music side. In many (but not all) installations, it can act as a complete remote-replacement for the music system, giving you a way to control music in rooms where you have a music player but no full-featured wall panel or remote. In fact, it's so good at this function, that it may well compel owners to add some music zones to their house now that they can easily control those zones from an iPod touch in those rooms, or from their iPhones that they may always carry with them.
Connections & Setup
Like all good iPhone apps, there's practically nothing needed to install it. Download it from the AppStore, and in all likelihood, when you run it it will discover your system on the home network and begin operating. You'll see each of your movie and music players listed on RemoteScape's Options screen. Pick one, and you're now controlling that zone. It works through wifi, of course, so you'll need a home network with wifi, but presumably iPhone and iPod Touch users have that already.
By virtue of its wifi connection, you don't need a "base station" or anything like that. It communicates with your Kaleidescape players and server through TCP/IP. That provides for reliable communication without worry for RF or IR reception, but should also make some potential weaknesses (for some users) obvious: it can't control volume of your audio system, it can't change your TV to the right input, it can't interact with ANY gear other than your Kaleidescape players. For this reason, Remotescape is in all likelihood NOT a replacement for your system remote. It's an auxiliary remote that can control your system in other ways, but you'll still need a way to power-on your gear and control volume and inputs, at the very least. Even if you have other gear that can take commands via TCP/IP, there's no provision for that in Remotescape. It ONLY controls Kaleidescape players. So as nice as it is, it won't become the remote you hand to the babysitter or the in-laws. Crestron programmers, Proto-Edit and MX-Editor users need not fear for their job skills yet.
Connecting via Wifi does have one other downside. Every time your iphone or ipod goes to sleep, the wifi connection is broken. So grabbing the iphone when it's off means you have to "wake it", unlock it, and then wait while it re-establishes wifi connection. This can take maybe 8-10 seconds total, so it means it's not always handy to reach for the iphone to quickly issue a command unless you turn off the sleep function of the iphone while you're using it for Kaleidescape control. (Something the Remotescape software doesn't offer on its own).
It also means you're controlling your Kaleidescape while at home, on your home network. There's no ability to remotely control your Kaleidescape while away from your home via cellular or another network. I have no idea why you'd want to do this, but for some reason I still thought it was worth noting.
OK, with those caveats now given, let's see what this device CAN do.
Movie & Kaleidescape UI control:By virtue of its wifi connection, you don't need a "base station" or anything like that. It communicates with your Kaleidescape players and server through TCP/IP. That provides for reliable communication without worry for RF or IR reception, but should also make some potential weaknesses (for some users) obvious: it can't control volume of your audio system, it can't change your TV to the right input, it can't interact with ANY gear other than your Kaleidescape players. For this reason, Remotescape is in all likelihood NOT a replacement for your system remote. It's an auxiliary remote that can control your system in other ways, but you'll still need a way to power-on your gear and control volume and inputs, at the very least. Even if you have other gear that can take commands via TCP/IP, there's no provision for that in Remotescape. It ONLY controls Kaleidescape players. So as nice as it is, it won't become the remote you hand to the babysitter or the in-laws. Crestron programmers, Proto-Edit and MX-Editor users need not fear for their job skills yet.
Connecting via Wifi does have one other downside. Every time your iphone or ipod goes to sleep, the wifi connection is broken. So grabbing the iphone when it's off means you have to "wake it", unlock it, and then wait while it re-establishes wifi connection. This can take maybe 8-10 seconds total, so it means it's not always handy to reach for the iphone to quickly issue a command unless you turn off the sleep function of the iphone while you're using it for Kaleidescape control. (Something the Remotescape software doesn't offer on its own).
It also means you're controlling your Kaleidescape while at home, on your home network. There's no ability to remotely control your Kaleidescape while away from your home via cellular or another network. I have no idea why you'd want to do this, but for some reason I still thought it was worth noting.
OK, with those caveats now given, let's see what this device CAN do.
Like most good touchscreen controls, you can use Remotescape to move around the Kaleidescape UI. There are all the usual shortcut buttons to take you directly to List, Cover-view, and Collections, and in-movie controls like transport buttons, Intermission, and DVD Menu. While a movie is playing, you can bring up a "Now Playing" screen on Remotescape to see the metadata and cover art for your movie.
Where the Remotescape app comes up short, it's due to some limitations Kaleidescape currently imposes on data that's available via TCP/IP for movie data. (Items they seem to have CORRECTED for the music subsystem when they released that system update, but still haven't been addressed for Movies). For instance, the remote can't show you what chapter you're in, nor present you with your favorite scenes. It CAN show you the cover for your current movie (as shown above) but it can't replicate cover nav mode on the remote itself. (something it does nicely for music.) For now, it doesn't have direct controls for selecting audio tracks or subtitles. In practice, some of these limitations may not matter much to you, since you're unlikely to ever browse and want to control movies without having your display on. In other cases, the remote can accomplish everything you want by virtue of being able to pull up the overlay controls at the bottom of the Kaleidescape UI where you can find panels for all your audio, subtitle, and favorite-scene controls. You look up at your display while your hands operate the remote, and it can work well. (We'll talk about Music later, but most of these limitations don't exist there and the remote really shines as a great remote-room music controller as you can see and do everything you'd want without any display device. The remotescape shows EVERYTHING you want for music, including cover art, progress bar, time indicators, etc.)
The team has come up with some very novel remote UI conventions... some that seem odd at first but become quite valuable as you use the remote. The first is the concept of a "Navigation Pad" on the iphone... an area of the touchscreen marked out for you to use almost like a trackpad on a laptop. Flick your finger left to move your on-screen cursor left, flick-right to go right, etc., mimicking your typical 4-way cursor buttons on a normal remote. Hold and drag in a direction to move quickly that way on screen. It's harder to explain than it is to use, but it's quite impressive. (One notable ommission is that in list views Remotescape can issue "line-up" and "line-down" commands, even letting you hold those commands for faster movement, but does NOT yet offer "page-up" and "page-down" via the NavPad... so moving through very long lists can be painfully slow... and far slower than a properly-programmed handheld remote may be.)
There are some quirks to the UI that may or may not bother other users. As one small example (around which I had a spirited email debate with the Remotescape team) is the "flick" orientation. Iphone apps tend to use the flick-motion to control the list you're seeing... you're flicking the list up, meaning your cursor is going down the list. Seems very natural on iphones once you use your contacts list or any other long list. Remotescape follows more conventional setup where flicking down means you want to move your cursor down. That looks right when you're looking up at your display device. Down action with finger = down action on screen. But it's the opposite of iphone apps, where "flick down" = I want to push the list down = I want to move my cursor UP. I can see their point of view, but I'm still not used to it on Remotescape and constantly find I'm moving things the wrong way from what I intended. Maybe more use will make me comfortable with it, or maybe I'm just weird.
But, those are minor quibbles all, and some may well be addressed with future Kaleidescape system updates or Remotescape app updates.
In all, for movies, the remote is very nice with some features that you won't see elsewhere, and you may well find it becomes the remote you want in-hand during movie watching. It's very simple and easy to use and looks very... well... Kaleidescape!
Music Control:
Where the Remotescape app comes up short, it's due to some limitations Kaleidescape currently imposes on data that's available via TCP/IP for movie data. (Items they seem to have CORRECTED for the music subsystem when they released that system update, but still haven't been addressed for Movies). For instance, the remote can't show you what chapter you're in, nor present you with your favorite scenes. It CAN show you the cover for your current movie (as shown above) but it can't replicate cover nav mode on the remote itself. (something it does nicely for music.) For now, it doesn't have direct controls for selecting audio tracks or subtitles. In practice, some of these limitations may not matter much to you, since you're unlikely to ever browse and want to control movies without having your display on. In other cases, the remote can accomplish everything you want by virtue of being able to pull up the overlay controls at the bottom of the Kaleidescape UI where you can find panels for all your audio, subtitle, and favorite-scene controls. You look up at your display while your hands operate the remote, and it can work well. (We'll talk about Music later, but most of these limitations don't exist there and the remote really shines as a great remote-room music controller as you can see and do everything you'd want without any display device. The remotescape shows EVERYTHING you want for music, including cover art, progress bar, time indicators, etc.)
The team has come up with some very novel remote UI conventions... some that seem odd at first but become quite valuable as you use the remote. The first is the concept of a "Navigation Pad" on the iphone... an area of the touchscreen marked out for you to use almost like a trackpad on a laptop. Flick your finger left to move your on-screen cursor left, flick-right to go right, etc., mimicking your typical 4-way cursor buttons on a normal remote. Hold and drag in a direction to move quickly that way on screen. It's harder to explain than it is to use, but it's quite impressive. (One notable ommission is that in list views Remotescape can issue "line-up" and "line-down" commands, even letting you hold those commands for faster movement, but does NOT yet offer "page-up" and "page-down" via the NavPad... so moving through very long lists can be painfully slow... and far slower than a properly-programmed handheld remote may be.)
There are some quirks to the UI that may or may not bother other users. As one small example (around which I had a spirited email debate with the Remotescape team) is the "flick" orientation. Iphone apps tend to use the flick-motion to control the list you're seeing... you're flicking the list up, meaning your cursor is going down the list. Seems very natural on iphones once you use your contacts list or any other long list. Remotescape follows more conventional setup where flicking down means you want to move your cursor down. That looks right when you're looking up at your display device. Down action with finger = down action on screen. But it's the opposite of iphone apps, where "flick down" = I want to push the list down = I want to move my cursor UP. I can see their point of view, but I'm still not used to it on Remotescape and constantly find I'm moving things the wrong way from what I intended. Maybe more use will make me comfortable with it, or maybe I'm just weird.
But, those are minor quibbles all, and some may well be addressed with future Kaleidescape system updates or Remotescape app updates.
In all, for movies, the remote is very nice with some features that you won't see elsewhere, and you may well find it becomes the remote you want in-hand during movie watching. It's very simple and easy to use and looks very... well... Kaleidescape!
OK, this is where this remote really takes off. While some may find that it can't (yet?) fully replace another remote for movies, it very well may be the best interface yet developed for Kaleidescape Music control.
Flick through your movie collection by covers, artist, genre, or lists... just like you expect on screen, but now with great iPod "flick" and drag functionality. While music is playing, you get the full cover art, the location in the track and album, the now-playing list. TILT your iPhone at any time to see all your music in cover-art mode...
My favorite clever remotescape trick? Just shake your iphone to shuffle the cover-art view! But of course! Love that...
You can of course search through your music by key word... in a title, band, album, etc. You can browse by artist, title, genre, composer, mix albums, your newest albums. Everything you typically do with your onscreen interface.
It's a remarkably clean and thorough interface for finding and controlling your music. The menus are well laid-out, the search works very quickly, you can navigate your collection any way you like, and then easily return to your now-playing list. Music fans are going to go nuts for this... it's just simply the best way I've seen to quickly control your music.
There are a few nits I have with the interface, but they're pretty minor, and again, you may feel differently. First - the search is very powerful, but there's no universal search box as I'd like. I'd like to quickly have a box where I can type "Clapton" or "Concerto" or "Bohemian" and have it search across album, song, and artist. As it is, there are several screens that have a search box, but you have to keep reminding yourself what page you're on when you enter a search term. It will only search the screen you're on, so if you're deep into looking at a particular genre or subgenre, the search will only apply to that genre. That may be just what you wanted. But I kept thinking the search would be universal. To search for your clapton music, you MUST go into "Artists" and then you can search for Clapton. Now, they were smart enough to also include the artists names in the "Albums by Title" list, so "Clapton" does works as a search term there and finds "Reptile - Eric Clapton" as well as "Cream of Eric Clapton - Eric Clapton". So it does work well once you're in any of your music lists.
I had also hoped to be able to explore all the music metadata that Kaleidescape offers - like album reviews, artist bios, etc. on the iphone, but it doesn't (yet?) do this. (This goes back to what information Kaleidescape has thought to provide via TCP/IP as your system operates. Again, we can hope that this changes in the future.) Would be nice to be in a room with no display, and not just control my music but explore it, read the data and info, etc., just as I often do onscreen when I play K music now. Similarly, if I wanted to really pick nits, I'd say that it would be nice if you could re-order your mix albums using the standard iPhone "edit/reorder" methodology like you do for your phone lists, stock quotes, etc. But that's really not a problem - rare to want to do that on a remote... seems better suited for doing via a web or on-screen interface.
That said, all in all, I really can't find much fault in the music side... it's great, and alone is worth the price of the app and an iphone! Having a handy device JUST for searching my music is quite nice... and I definitely now find myself using the iPhone to control the music in my living room and dining room, where I have no screen and formerly relied on my RF handheld remote.
Overall Thoughts:Flick through your movie collection by covers, artist, genre, or lists... just like you expect on screen, but now with great iPod "flick" and drag functionality. While music is playing, you get the full cover art, the location in the track and album, the now-playing list. TILT your iPhone at any time to see all your music in cover-art mode...
My favorite clever remotescape trick? Just shake your iphone to shuffle the cover-art view! But of course! Love that...
You can of course search through your music by key word... in a title, band, album, etc. You can browse by artist, title, genre, composer, mix albums, your newest albums. Everything you typically do with your onscreen interface.
It's a remarkably clean and thorough interface for finding and controlling your music. The menus are well laid-out, the search works very quickly, you can navigate your collection any way you like, and then easily return to your now-playing list. Music fans are going to go nuts for this... it's just simply the best way I've seen to quickly control your music.
There are a few nits I have with the interface, but they're pretty minor, and again, you may feel differently. First - the search is very powerful, but there's no universal search box as I'd like. I'd like to quickly have a box where I can type "Clapton" or "Concerto" or "Bohemian" and have it search across album, song, and artist. As it is, there are several screens that have a search box, but you have to keep reminding yourself what page you're on when you enter a search term. It will only search the screen you're on, so if you're deep into looking at a particular genre or subgenre, the search will only apply to that genre. That may be just what you wanted. But I kept thinking the search would be universal. To search for your clapton music, you MUST go into "Artists" and then you can search for Clapton. Now, they were smart enough to also include the artists names in the "Albums by Title" list, so "Clapton" does works as a search term there and finds "Reptile - Eric Clapton" as well as "Cream of Eric Clapton - Eric Clapton". So it does work well once you're in any of your music lists.
I had also hoped to be able to explore all the music metadata that Kaleidescape offers - like album reviews, artist bios, etc. on the iphone, but it doesn't (yet?) do this. (This goes back to what information Kaleidescape has thought to provide via TCP/IP as your system operates. Again, we can hope that this changes in the future.) Would be nice to be in a room with no display, and not just control my music but explore it, read the data and info, etc., just as I often do onscreen when I play K music now. Similarly, if I wanted to really pick nits, I'd say that it would be nice if you could re-order your mix albums using the standard iPhone "edit/reorder" methodology like you do for your phone lists, stock quotes, etc. But that's really not a problem - rare to want to do that on a remote... seems better suited for doing via a web or on-screen interface.
That said, all in all, I really can't find much fault in the music side... it's great, and alone is worth the price of the app and an iphone! Having a handy device JUST for searching my music is quite nice... and I definitely now find myself using the iPhone to control the music in my living room and dining room, where I have no screen and formerly relied on my RF handheld remote.
Remotescape really is a remarkable achievement. It's a new and simple way to control and interact with your Kaleidescape in ways that used to cost thousands of dollars in programming fees alone and involve expensive proprietary hardware. Now with an iPhone or iPod Touch for just a few hundred bucks, plus the very reasonable cost of this software app in the Apple AppStore, you have 80%-90% of those features. The remote UI is clean and easy to navigate, and offers some great feature. I expect the software to continue to improve and some of the nits and quirks I've pointed out may well be addressed.
But those faults are very minor and the software is something that I expect a very high percentage of Kaleidescape owners will purchase and love it. Congrats to Remotescape for bringing this to market... it's something we've all been waiting for!
I'll try to post more thoughts when I have more time and play with the final relase a bit more. Looking forward to hearing thoughts from others of you.
--josh
But those faults are very minor and the software is something that I expect a very high percentage of Kaleidescape owners will purchase and love it. Congrats to Remotescape for bringing this to market... it's something we've all been waiting for!
I'll try to post more thoughts when I have more time and play with the final relase a bit more. Looking forward to hearing thoughts from others of you.
--josh
