Smart Home Blog

Almost four years ago it was announced plans to bring Insteon devices to Europe. But only now those plans become a reality. Joe Dada, SmartLabs / Smarthome owner, confirmed the European spec Insteon units are already in use on trials and they will ship in 2012! Both types will be available – powerline and RF. Very good news for all X10 owners because Insteon is compatible with that old home automation technology and can be used together with X10 devices.

Currently the most interesting question is about the price of European Insteon devices. Will it bit Z-Wave we see very soon I hope.

Boxee team officially confirmed LiveTV feature. It’ll be available in January 2012 for US and Canada users Boxee Box only. PC version of Boxee won’t have such possibility. Also there is a clear explanation that PVR (Personal Video Recorder) functionality won’t be available. It’ll be truly Live TV without recording or pausing.

The main goal of LiveTV on Boxee Box is to replace many devices by only one and to bring a competitor of existing cable boxes and services. Boxee promises a good range of channels with reasonable price. And it’ll be really cool advantage to existing Boxee features – playback various media types from different sources and integration with online media and social services. Also Boxee Box LiveTV looks much better then any GoogleTV box.

As I already mentioned, the LiveTV will be available in January 2012. But LiveTV USB stick can be pre-ordered even now.

Many houses already have coax cables for TV. But currently consumers need join their rooms into computer network. So, to do that we have a least two ways: put new CAT5 or use existing coax. The WiPNET’s products might help with the second option. Actually the procedure to replace existing coax wall plate by WiPNET sleeve and cartridge won’t take more then 5-10 minutes. And the fast wired network (about 100 Mbit/s), plus extended WiFi range will cover almost all consumer’s needs. Nice, isn’t it?

Recently I received to my mailbox a link to a very interesting remote control called PC-TV All in One. It has both IR and RF. IR is used to control TV while RF is needed to send commands to HTPC. Except navigation, numeric and playback hard keys, the remote control sports QWERTY keyboard and 360-degree Jog-ball mouse control. Not bad for thirty four bucks device.

The PC-TV All in One remote control will be ideal if you use just TV and HTPC with XBMC, Boxee, PLEX or LinuxMCE. It’ll make navigation through media library or online services. However if you have additionally cable box or AV receiver then you should find something else. Because PC-TV All in One supports only two devices. Also not sure then Jog-ball is good to control mouse. I use similar one in the iMON remote and would like to say the Gyration remote is much more handy. But the QWERTY keyboard is a big advantage. so, take it into account.

Looks like Boxee is going to add PVR functionality very soon. It’ll use USB TV tuner to allow Boxee users watch, schedule, pause Live TV as well as navigate via EPG. Social features will be also available for that kind of media content. You’ll be able to share your favorite TV shows with your Boxee or Facebook friends.

XBMC which was and is a base for Boxee still doesn’t have PVR support. There is a way to watch and record live TV using VDR (yaVDR) or MythTV (MythBox). But it’d be nice to have a native PVR functionality. Let’s see how it’ll be implemented in Boxee. The PVR release should be launched soon. But now let’s watch a short demo video of Live TV setup under the Boxee after break.
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