Home Cinema Control

We believe that the home cinema controls are an integral part of the experience of the system. It is frustrating if you have spent a large amount of money on a home cinema system, but it is difficult or temperamental to operate.

Home cinema control IR remote

The home cinema control systems we use revolve about the activity you want to do. So for example if you want to watch tv, you press a button marked “Watch TV”. The system components switch on and the inputs configure to watching TV without any further control necessary.

We have learnt that a control system is only ever as good as the way that it is programmed. There are many hugely expensive home cinema control systems out there that are programmed badly and perform poorly. Similarly you can have a simple control system that is well programmed, but limited in scope, however is a joy to use as it is intuitive, and designed around what you want to do.

 

Most modern Home cinema processors, screens and projectors are hugely sophisticated devices capable of often much more than their basic pretext. However because a system can do something doesn’t always mean that you should do it, and this is especially true of home cinema control. There’s probably not much point in being able to play a film on your home cinema whilst on your yacht in the Bahamas!

We have programmed a wide range of control systems over the years, and have learnt to recognise a good system when we see it. The Logitech Harmony remote controls (See picture above) although some of the cheapest (at £229 including a wireless receiver), are nevertheless some of the most reliable and robust solutions.

For more complex solutions e.g. where you have multiple rooms et. we can design a home cinema control system to operate from your iPad. For this we use a system called DemoPad, coupled with a range of robust interface devices from Global Cache, to give us control over most things. In fact with this system, you can move rapidly into the realms of home automation where many things around the home can be controlled including heating, lighting, CCTV and door entry systems etc. etc. In fact the only limitation is your imagination and /or budget.

 Home cinema control via iPad

The ubiquity of the iPad means now that integration of home cinema control systems onto the iPad has become commonplace. this can work well, but heavily relies on a robust network and good WiFi access. The beauty of these systems is that it is easy to highly customise them for the specific application including photographs and diagrams etc into the design:

 

 

ipad Home cinema control screen showing action based controls: