One of the banes of owning a lot of tech devices for your home entertainment system is not the space that it occupies – true gadget geeks always find a way of fitting equipment into a room – but the growing number of remotes that one has to contend with. You’ve got remotes for your TV, BD player, receiver, media player, various legacy electronics. You get the idea.
The best way to really solve the remote control problem is to be able to use just one remote to control all of the equipment you have. But a universal remote does not usually perform as advertised. The usual universal remote will always have some feature lacking or will not perform as advertised. Even those expensive universal remotes that look like a daunting piece of future tech do stumble during real world applications.
One group recognized the problem of multiple remote controls and are trying to provide a solution with a new universal remote that they are currently developing. The Bridge is being designed from the ground up to really take control of all the home theatre devices in your room as long as it is controlled by an IR remote.
The Bridge eschews the standard wand form factor in favour of a design that more closely resembles a videogame controller. The Bridge will also sport a QWERTY keyboard with backlit keys, a mouse along with the universal remote component. These three things are what is needed in any modern home theatre.
The Bridge is still being developed but a $65 pledge will help the team developing the Bridge and will also ensure that you’ll get it when it is released.