Vidabox, one of the top-of-the-line Media Center manufacturers, put out a press release today about a new product they are calling the Liiv Controller. It will be officially shown for the first time at the Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) show which will be held from February 1-3 in Amsterdam, but we have a special early look.
So what is the Liiv Controller? Quite simply it’s a box, which looks similar to any stereo component, that allows you to control your home media from an iPad. Now, we aren’t talking about an iPad remote control app here, this is a lot more sophisticated. The LC-200 is a rack-mountable component that integrated into your home theater and works with Media Center.
It allows you to control, browse, and play any media right from your iPad. You can control up to 4 separate zones with 6 separate IR control so that you can handle your TV, Audio/video receiver, DVR, Blu-ray/DVD player, as well as other components. It has 2 RS-232 Serial Ports, 2-way iPod playback controls, is remotely manageable, streams internet radio, and uses vAutomation 2.0 which allows you to program and configure it from any web browser, including the one on your iPad.
There is now pricing available at this point but a release date has been slated for sometime in the second quarter of 2011. This is one that you’ll want to take a long look at if it lives up to its hype and if you are a home theater/automation geek.
I’ve been experimenting for some time with connecting computers to televisions, along with a variety of other set-top boxes. I’m now at a point where I’ve begun to draw a few conclusions.
If you haven’t seen how small Shuttle’s XS35 series of ultra small PCs are, then you need to look more closely at the picture on the left. The PC is the unit stuck to the back of the monitor.
