erland
2007-09-20, 10:49
I've still just tried the new Jive remote for maybe two or three hours, but I thought it was worth posting some initial impressions.
Overall feeling
===============
The overall feeling of the remote is pretty good, I thought it felt a lot nicer when I had it in the hand compared to the pictures. There are of course some bugs and instability issues to fix yet, but that is expected at this stage. It feels nicer and more fun to browse your music library with this remote compared to browsing with the old remote and the SqueezeBox display. Although, when you are searching for something to listen on I still think the web interface is the best. But I expect that this feeling might change after I have converted the Custom Browse plugin to 7.0 and Jive so I get its browse functionality on the Jive remote.
I'm still lending more at keeping my Harmony universal remote when this Jive remote is released, but I'm not as sure as I was a few days ago. However, even though I would keep my Harmony I really like this remote to succeed. The reason is simply that I know that the logical next step after a successful Jive remote will probably be some integration between Jive and the Harmony line.
Hardware or firmware related
============================
- The battery door needs to be improved, i had to use a a sharp knife to get it open.
- It would be nice if the MAC address were shown somewhere in the menus, for example directly on the screen when trying to connect. The reason is simply that many people might be using MAC filters on their wireless networks.
- I would like to be able to decrease the navigation click volume, but couldn't find a way to do it.
- The wireless reception isn't that good, I had to setup my old Netgear 802.11b AP in the same room to get decent reception. My standard Belkin 802.11g AP sits about 10 metres from where I'm sitting in the living room with 2 or 3 thin walls inbetween, I get decent reception when I'm about 5 metres away with a single wall inbetween. The SqueezeBox also sitting in the living room has never had any problem connecting wireless to the Belkin 802.11g AP. The SqueezeBox currently has a wired connection since I already have the network cable there due to a MythTV HTPC beside the SqueezeBox.
- The navigation in longer lists with more than 50 items is painful, this must be improved IMHO. One way would be to have some accelleration so it navigates a a bit faster on the second round while spinning the wheel and faster then that on the third round of the wheel. Another way which might be even more usable is adding two more buttons for "Page Up" and "Page Down" which jumps a few pages instead of just a single row, these buttons might be usable for other things if some third party developer decides to control other devices than SlimServer with it. A third solution would be to add number keys to the remote, but this would probably mean that the remote needs to be enlarged a bit.
- Navigation in the lists that contains album art is a bit slow for me, which also makes it very bad for navigating long lists, this makes the "Albums" menu pretty useless.
- When you navigate faster with the wheel than the "Albums" menu is able to move there is a lag, the menu keeps scrolling several seconds after I have stopped moving the wheel. I'm not sure if this is possible to solve, but it is a bit irritating
- The navigation clicking sound needs to be lower in volume, I think I would like some sound but the volume is way to high at the moment.
- The screen is a bit small, to little information can be showed on it. But I guess this is a decision where price comes in and set some limitations of what is possible to accomplish.
Possible bugs
=============
- I left the remote with the analog clock screen saver over night and turn off SlimServer, when I picked up the remote in the morning it didn't answer on any commands but the clock still showed the correct time. I started SlimServer but it wouldn't still answer on any commands beside the off command by holding the home button. Restarting it by holding the home button made it work again.
- I wasn't able to get back control after activating the Flickr screen saver (I'm not sure I used the latest firware at this time).
- The remote has hanged for me a few times, some times when I navigated some menus and the wireless reception got bad and one time when the remote was just laying down with full battery.
Improvment potential
====================
- Its a bit confusing that you sometimes sees icons, but don't know how to access them. A concrete example is the repeat icon shown in the "Now Playing" screen, which I haven't yet figured out how to access
besides from the Settings menu. On the old SlimRemote we have relied on cryptical button commandos like holding play down and similar to access extra funtion. I think it would be great if the menu had a "Context" button which you could push pretty much on any page and it would show you a menu of the functions relevant to that page or the selected item. This would work for the repeat function and also for the mixer functionallity to launch a mixer from an album. It would require a hardware change though, since all the buttons available now is used for other things.
- When navigating to the "Now Playing" page I would like it to show the fullscreen mode of the currently playing track by default and let med navigate to the current playlist by an extra click.
- In the "Now Playing" current playlist mode when I see all the tracks, the indication of the currently playing track is too similar to the non playing tracks. It is very hard to see the difference which currently as far as I have seen only is a small change in screen font.
- In the "Now Playing" screen saver I would like a larger album art to be shown, it could cover the whole width of the screen and the text could be overlayed over the album art.
- When navigating track listings it would be great if you could switch the remote 90 degrees and the screen would switch in same way as the iPhone does. This would make it possible to show more information on each line. I also have the impression that the Information Browser plugin could gain some usability points by allowing this. I don't even know if the gyro would allow a functionality like this.
The most critical issue that needs to be solved is the wireless reception. I'm not sure if I just got a bad copy, but the remote really loses some of its usages when you only have reception good enough within the same room as the accesspoint and sometimes not even that if there are some things inbetween. I've had no problem with the SqueezeBox wireless connection. It's not critical during the beta test period for me since I temporary have moved a access point into the living room, but it needs to be fixed before release.
Finally, I just want to say thank you to Logitech for allowing me to participate in this beta testing. I'll get back with more information as soon as I have used to remote a bit more.
Overall feeling
===============
The overall feeling of the remote is pretty good, I thought it felt a lot nicer when I had it in the hand compared to the pictures. There are of course some bugs and instability issues to fix yet, but that is expected at this stage. It feels nicer and more fun to browse your music library with this remote compared to browsing with the old remote and the SqueezeBox display. Although, when you are searching for something to listen on I still think the web interface is the best. But I expect that this feeling might change after I have converted the Custom Browse plugin to 7.0 and Jive so I get its browse functionality on the Jive remote.
I'm still lending more at keeping my Harmony universal remote when this Jive remote is released, but I'm not as sure as I was a few days ago. However, even though I would keep my Harmony I really like this remote to succeed. The reason is simply that I know that the logical next step after a successful Jive remote will probably be some integration between Jive and the Harmony line.
Hardware or firmware related
============================
- The battery door needs to be improved, i had to use a a sharp knife to get it open.
- It would be nice if the MAC address were shown somewhere in the menus, for example directly on the screen when trying to connect. The reason is simply that many people might be using MAC filters on their wireless networks.
- I would like to be able to decrease the navigation click volume, but couldn't find a way to do it.
- The wireless reception isn't that good, I had to setup my old Netgear 802.11b AP in the same room to get decent reception. My standard Belkin 802.11g AP sits about 10 metres from where I'm sitting in the living room with 2 or 3 thin walls inbetween, I get decent reception when I'm about 5 metres away with a single wall inbetween. The SqueezeBox also sitting in the living room has never had any problem connecting wireless to the Belkin 802.11g AP. The SqueezeBox currently has a wired connection since I already have the network cable there due to a MythTV HTPC beside the SqueezeBox.
- The navigation in longer lists with more than 50 items is painful, this must be improved IMHO. One way would be to have some accelleration so it navigates a a bit faster on the second round while spinning the wheel and faster then that on the third round of the wheel. Another way which might be even more usable is adding two more buttons for "Page Up" and "Page Down" which jumps a few pages instead of just a single row, these buttons might be usable for other things if some third party developer decides to control other devices than SlimServer with it. A third solution would be to add number keys to the remote, but this would probably mean that the remote needs to be enlarged a bit.
- Navigation in the lists that contains album art is a bit slow for me, which also makes it very bad for navigating long lists, this makes the "Albums" menu pretty useless.
- When you navigate faster with the wheel than the "Albums" menu is able to move there is a lag, the menu keeps scrolling several seconds after I have stopped moving the wheel. I'm not sure if this is possible to solve, but it is a bit irritating
- The navigation clicking sound needs to be lower in volume, I think I would like some sound but the volume is way to high at the moment.
- The screen is a bit small, to little information can be showed on it. But I guess this is a decision where price comes in and set some limitations of what is possible to accomplish.
Possible bugs
=============
- I left the remote with the analog clock screen saver over night and turn off SlimServer, when I picked up the remote in the morning it didn't answer on any commands but the clock still showed the correct time. I started SlimServer but it wouldn't still answer on any commands beside the off command by holding the home button. Restarting it by holding the home button made it work again.
- I wasn't able to get back control after activating the Flickr screen saver (I'm not sure I used the latest firware at this time).
- The remote has hanged for me a few times, some times when I navigated some menus and the wireless reception got bad and one time when the remote was just laying down with full battery.
Improvment potential
====================
- Its a bit confusing that you sometimes sees icons, but don't know how to access them. A concrete example is the repeat icon shown in the "Now Playing" screen, which I haven't yet figured out how to access
besides from the Settings menu. On the old SlimRemote we have relied on cryptical button commandos like holding play down and similar to access extra funtion. I think it would be great if the menu had a "Context" button which you could push pretty much on any page and it would show you a menu of the functions relevant to that page or the selected item. This would work for the repeat function and also for the mixer functionallity to launch a mixer from an album. It would require a hardware change though, since all the buttons available now is used for other things.
- When navigating to the "Now Playing" page I would like it to show the fullscreen mode of the currently playing track by default and let med navigate to the current playlist by an extra click.
- In the "Now Playing" current playlist mode when I see all the tracks, the indication of the currently playing track is too similar to the non playing tracks. It is very hard to see the difference which currently as far as I have seen only is a small change in screen font.
- In the "Now Playing" screen saver I would like a larger album art to be shown, it could cover the whole width of the screen and the text could be overlayed over the album art.
- When navigating track listings it would be great if you could switch the remote 90 degrees and the screen would switch in same way as the iPhone does. This would make it possible to show more information on each line. I also have the impression that the Information Browser plugin could gain some usability points by allowing this. I don't even know if the gyro would allow a functionality like this.
The most critical issue that needs to be solved is the wireless reception. I'm not sure if I just got a bad copy, but the remote really loses some of its usages when you only have reception good enough within the same room as the accesspoint and sometimes not even that if there are some things inbetween. I've had no problem with the SqueezeBox wireless connection. It's not critical during the beta test period for me since I temporary have moved a access point into the living room, but it needs to be fixed before release.
Finally, I just want to say thank you to Logitech for allowing me to participate in this beta testing. I'll get back with more information as soon as I have used to remote a bit more.