Cyberlink Remote - A Review

[squareeyessam]

For all UK users of GBPVR
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Play are selling a bargain remote control made by cyberlink for the great price of £5.99
http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/6372024/Cy...oduct.html

But is it worth spending so little on a remote to use with GBPVR..?

The answer depends on exactly what you want.

I wanted just basic functionality to assist me in my laziness when watching my PC monitor from afar, but if you want a good remote that you can customize all the keys for - then look elsewhere...

But, dont be put off, have a read of how I have set up the remote using HIP to see if it is worth it for you.

There are a tons of keys on the Cyberlink remote, but unfortunately nearly all cannot be programed. HIP cannot see the keys, niether can EventGhost or Girder4.

You will be left with (as far as I can figure out) 5 keys to configure using HIP - but all is not lost as some of the keys work straight away in GBPVR!

In the centre of the remote are 4 directional arrow keys and a large 'OK' button. These move around the GBPVR menus perfect and also work well in the liveTV with the up and down arrows controling the channel and the left and right fast forward or rewinding - great!

There is a section of number keys which work straight away in GBPVR but because of that they cannot be customized.

You already have most of the basic functions you need, but being able to go 'back' to a previous menu is a certain requirement. Lucky there is a set of 12 keys in a white area of the remote, and very lucky that only one is programable, and extremely lucky is the fact it is labeled 'back. So, using HIP I have bound that button to the 'ESC' key to allow me to move between menus.

Towards the lower end of the remote are the keys 'play','pause' etc, non of which work in GBPVR but do in Media Player - the bad news is they are also not programable. However the 'stop' and 'next track','previous track' keys are!

I have bound the stop key to ^Q which will pause liveTV.
I have bound the previous track key to ^W to flick me back to the last channel watched.
I have bound the next track key to ^G which brings up the mini guide overlay.

Last but not least there is a 'clear' key at the bottom left of the remote, I have bound this to ^K to record.

I now have a large remote thatg does hardly anything at all - BUT it does perform the most needed option in GBPVR when viewing from about 10 foot away from your PC.

At a price of £5.99 it is good value and provides basic functionality, but if the price was any higher then it would probably be worth looking at a better remote.

I hope this review has helped anyone out there who loves GBPVR as much as I do and wants to use a remote but is on a tight budget.

regards.
squareeyessam.

[fuzzweed]

It really P's me off how manufacturers bind there remotes and media keys to WMP. I got an expensive logitech keyboard and was livid that it had 4 customizable buttons, and the rest were WMP only. Fortunately some clever internet kid had found out how to edit it's xml file to release its full potential, but really for the money I paid he shouldn't have had to.
anyway... [/rant]
It looks like quite a nice bit of kit so would be interesting to know how easy it would be to hack it's own non-programable keys. don't suppose there's an obvious ini or xml file hanging round in the install or app data directories????

[squareeyessam]

It really P's me off how manufacturers bind there remotes and media keys to WMP. I got an expensive logitech keyboard and was livid that it had 4 customizable buttons, and the rest were WMP only. Fortunately some clever internet kid had found out how to edit it's xml file to release its full potential, but really for the money I paid he shouldn't have had to.
anyway... [/rant]
It looks like quite a nice bit of kit so would be interesting to know how easy it would be to hack it's own non-programable keys. don't suppose there's an obvious ini or xml file hanging round in the install or app data directories????

fuzzweed I agree with you!
This remote comes supplied with the IR receiver, batteries and thats all.
No software or anything

[fuzzweed]

hmm, no software? maybe it's an MCE remote in disguise. Can you see what the IR receiver shows up as in device manager?

[squareeyessam]

hmm, no software? maybe it's an MCE remote in disguise. Can you see what the IR receiver shows up as in device manager?

Hi fuzzweed.

It has the look of an MCE type remote but I have not got a clue what it is.
The attached picture shows device manager before I plug it in and then after I plug it in so you can see that it adds a few entries.



Any idea what type this is?

I read the Girder forums and it seems other people with this remote cannot customize the keys on it with Girder 4 or 5, but it seems some people could customize it with Girder 3.3
I dont have Girder 3.3 unfortunately and so have had to use all the free software on the net - so far nothing seems to be able to get past those locked keys.

Would appreciate your comments fuzzweed.
Cheers mate.
Sam.

[fuzzweed]

it's a bit of a mystery - you're right it sure looks like an MCE button-wise (but layed out much better IMO). Can you expand "universal serial bus controllers" and see if you have either 'ehome' infrared remote control or MCE infrared remote listed.
seems funny that it runs without it's own drivers (suggesting MCE) but the girder forums (who I imagine are just as clever us us at GBPVR ) haven't mentioned this. Maybe it's kind of an embedded combo with it's receiver like a wireless keyboard or my only other thought would be that it does need drivers which are installed with another Cyberlink product - are you using PDVD or similar?

One of the reveiws on the link you posted says that intelliremote will remap the other buttons - maybe try that out if we don;t get any closer to finding out what it reallyis.

[pBS]

HID device? i think it follows some sort of HID standard for remotes so may be a reg entry to edit..
i'm curious as i have a mce type keyboard that has all the mce remote's key on it including the green button, all the media keys work fine for me in gbpvr, [play,pause,stop,both ff keys]
but the guide,recordings,etc don't so i'm curious to see how i can program those as it also doesn't have a driver and shows up just like his remote in dev man....
i'm thinking some readong of the hid standards or talk with the guy who wrote HIP so see what he knows about these..[these are ripe for use with hip, it's main purpose to provide programmability for hid devices]

tho we may come up against it all being hardcoded or having to intercept windows calls..

[fuzzweed]

the standard MCE remote shows up as an anonymous HID device, but also has the give-away entry I mentioned under USB controllers

[Melloware]

Intelliremote definitely supports the Cyberlink remotes and you can remap the functions to anything you want and control GBPVR completely with it.

[Graham]

Do the unprogrammable keys become programmable if you disable this service ...

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libra...56979.aspx

?