The iPod Is a Smarter Remote Control
I finally got the Griffin iTrip working reliably with both of our cars (actually, it hurts to say we have 2 cars – but that’s a different post). I realized, every time I unplug the iTrip from the iPod, it needs to be reset. Since resetting is the annoying part, I just leave it plugged in.
I’ve even started using it around the house – specifically with the Tivoli iPal.
This means, I can go from the house to the car to the house not miss a beat – just like an actual radio station. Hmmm. MPR, JackFM, Cities97 are you listening? With 5,585 tracks in my iTunes Library, I’m confident I have “…More Variety”.
Anyway, here’s the odd mental shift. With the iTrip, my iPod is basically a remote control to the nearest radio w/ speakers telling the speakers – whether in the car or the Tivoli – what to play. Just like the other remote controls around the house. The difference, the remote controls for the DVD and TV don’t contain the audio or video – the iPod does.
This is a whole different kind of remote control. Play, Fast Forward, Rewind, Pause are extremely blunt, primitive commands. The iPod says – play this, then this, then this.
It’s as if the DVD remote control contained the DVD and with the new video iPod, it’s exactly that.
One Comment
That is an interesting shift…
Some thoughts along the same line: I had for a brief spell the harmony/logitec remote control. It allowed me to program my favorite channels in it via the guide. It would probably be a nice extension of usefulness if would be able to take that to the other TV in my house.. because as it is, I found it to be useless (as I note in my review above)
It doesn’t seem unreasonable that now that we have large hard drives that can fit in your palm and a niche market for 250 dollar remote controls that we can merge more reasonable and useful content onto the remote itself (like DVR).