Life without four remote controls

We had gone to watch Kung Fu Panda over the weekend at Fun Cinemas on Cunningham Road. After the movie (which was nice), we stepped to the Reliance Timeout just a little further down the road to pick up some stationary. What I had not noticed in my previous visits to that store was that Reliance Digital - Reliance's appliance megastore - was on the first floor of the building. Curious as to what they had to offer, I sauntered over to check it out.

My first impression of the store was that they had a lot of stuff. A large floor space with refrigerators at one end and flat panel TVs at the other and everything else in between. Then I realized that these were the brands that you could get pretty much everywhere, just the prices were a tad below MRP (which is to say that you are buying at a little bit of a discount). I walked around to see if anything catches my eye and there it was, waiting for me to see it.

A whole bunch of Universal Remote Controllers (URC) to choose from!

Why do I need it? Why does anyone in the typical household today need one? So you have the remote controller for the TV, then there's one for the DVD player, one for the cable set top box and then, if you have a Home Theatre System, a remote for the amplifier. That's four remotes that I have to juggle with whenever there's something to be watched on TV. 

After a bunch of research on the Net about URCs, the general consensus was that the Logitech Harmony series (preferably the Harmony 1000 which has a cool touch screen display and looks like a PDA, but in the absence of that, the Harmony 890 which looks like a traditional remote, but is extremely versatile) was the best URC to buy. It was extendable, could be configured and taught using a PC and there were downloadable templates to configure it. All of this, without a lot of fuss. The downside? You guessed it. Cost! Both the models cost a BOMB! The 890, which was available at Reliance, was going at Rs. 16500, the equivalent of $400!

That's too much for a remote controller, I thought.

So there were the usual suspects. Some Chinese companies at a ridiculously low price (which makes me massively suspicious) and then there was Philips. There were three models available with increasing feature functionality and consequently, increasing cost. The range started from Rs 2999 (about $60) and went all the way up to Rs 10999 (about $250). Being the cost conscious Indian buyer, I narrowed down on the lower end of the spectrum. From what I saw, the more expensive ones were relatively easier to configure as compared to the lower end one and had more sources that they could control. The most I wanted was a replacement for the four remotes I have at home and this one could manage them all and a few more (seven to be precise). As for the ease of configuration, being the geek I am, I have no problem investing some time and a few brain cells to figure out how to do it. In fact, I would rather do it the hard way so that I know exactly what to do if shit hits the ceiling :-)

So I finally bought the Philips SRU 5170 URC, a product that comes with a bunch of preset codes for a bunch of sources and can replace up to 7 device remote controls. That was like music to my ears. What I did not expect is how quickly I would be able to get it up and running.

I started out with my LG plasma TV. On the remote, I initiated the process to add a source and it gave me an option of TV, AMP, DVD, CD, Cable, another TV and DVR. After I chose TV, it gave me a huge list of TVs to choose from. Within LG, it sent out test signals to figure out which would work the best and then just configured itself! One down three to go. The Sony DVD player and the Tata Sky cable set top box (Thomson rebranded...I checked at the back) went in similar lines. Then came the AMP setup and that is where the remote was lost. It did not have preset codes for my Cambridge Audio Azur 540. Granted that the Cambridge Audio brand is not the most popular in the world, but it is one of the best out there in terms of performance. But without wasting too much time on this, to cut a longish story shortish, there were no codes to auto set the remote. 

No worries! The remote can learn. I just set the remote to some arbitrary amp and then "taught" it all the keys I use on the AMP remote. By taught, I mean that I had to manually set all the keys by making the remote accept the codes that the main AMP remote was sending out. And the way to set it is so easy, it only takes a short while to do it. So that was done.

Then there was the picky part of me. I wanted all the popular buttons on all the remotes to be mapped appropriately to some button on the URC. That took a bit of time, not because of the time it takes for the remote to learn, but because I took a little time analyzing which keys get used the most and where to most appropriately place them. In case I did not want to allocate a button for it, the URC gave me the option of adding what it called "Xtras", something that you could activate from a list of extra functions. Like the Eject button for the DVD player. Or the Picture-In-Picture related buttons for the TV. Once that was done, the remote was all set. 

And that is when I realized the joy of using this thing. From a single place, I could do pretty much everything I wanted with my AV setup. Short of turning on my Wii and flying over the Wiimote to where I was sitting, the URC can do everything I ask it to. And in case I accidentally find a couple of buttons that I have forgotten to configure, it takes just a few seconds and it's done!

Purrrrrfectamente!

For anyone who has had enough of the multiple remote controllers at home, I would very VERY strongly recommend the Philips SRU  5170 URC. It will make your life a lot easier and make sure that you only have - and need - one remote controller by your side.

A different kind of cap

I remember when I was little, growing up in the bustling city of Mumbai (Bombay as it was called then). And when I was old enough to start noticing things, one of the things that I distinctly remember noticing is that most cars had either a little hat on top of their headlights or they had a thick black band running on the top inch of their headlights.

Being the curious kind (yeah, I gave my parents hell because of that!), I asked my Dad why that was so. And he told me that there was a law in the city of Bombay at that time to have this mark. The reason? To ensure that people don't use the high beam all the time and even if they did, the beam would not hurt drivers coming in from the opposite sides of the road.

Now that sounded like a novel solution to me. Instead of changing people's behaviors and accepting the fact that some people will not change no matter what, the governing body of Bombay had decided on ensuring this idiot proof solution to make driving at night better. As infrastructure in Mumbai got better, most people would just put the panel lights on and use the very good lighting on the road to avoid switching on the headlights of their cars.

Cut to local time, Bangalore!

If you have driven on the roads of Bangalore, you will know what I am talking about. Not only is there no good lighting on the roads, there is no discipline whatsoever when it comes to drivers plying on them. Compounding the problem is this habit of a lot of people to use the high beam as the default option while driving their cars. This makes driving in Bangalore, more so at night, a nightmare (no pun intended).

I think the law of 30 years ago in Bombay would make a lot of sense in today's Bangalore. It will make life a lot easier for commuters like me who prefer to drive their cars to work and back.

What do you think?

Oil prices, fuel efficiency and saber rattling

The last few months has been all about the record levels of fuel prices, what with the rising cost of crude oil and the $/barrel reaching new heights. Some analysts say that it will reach as high as $200 per barrel. This must sound like good news to all the OPEC nations and the BigOil corporations who are making record profits. 

While this definitely impacts the common man, it impacts in more ways than one. 

Last year, I made the decision to buy a fairly sophisticated car. Not only is this car a diesel car (making it a lot more cost effective in India, since diesel is still considered the farmer's fuel), it is also extremely fuel efficient. And it says so whenever I take it out for a drive. The display on the dashboard tells me all the information I need about the running of the car. The average speed, how far I have travelled since I last turned on the engine and - more importantly - how much fuel I'm consuming for that drive. I have a choice of keeping one of these indicators constantly on the display when I drive. Naturally, being Indian, I'm very concerned about how much fuel I burn getting from office to work and back.

What I have noticed is when I leave relatively early (courtesy having to drop my daughter to school every morning), I usually make it to office in around 25 minutes and the fuel efficiency readout shows 13.9 km/liter. The same journey at a slightly later time, or during traffic jam conditions, results in the readout showing 7.2 km/liter! And this is a good case!

When it rains in Bangalore, or because of the huge amounts of constructions(?) going on for the road leading to the new Bangalore International Airport, traffic piles up to such an extent that you can spend as much as an hour just clearing a small 1 km stretch on that road. I experienced it this morning when traffic refused to move for a long time and I watched as the counter moved steadily south to finally read 5.9 km/liter! With an average speed for the journey at 7 km/hour!

I just used up more than twice the amount of fuel for the same journey as I would have with relatively no traffic OR with infrastructure capable of handling the current traffic conditions. And this is for a very fuel efficient car. I shudder to think what it must be doing for mileage of older cars and ones that are not as tuned or as efficient. The problem is compounded even further when you consider that most of the cars running on the road are petrol, not diesel! 

It's one thing to talk about energy efficiency and pollution control, but all of that fine tuning and threshold setting comes to naught when you consider that most cars are running at speeds which are not the most optimum. That only causes the cars to burn more and pollute the environment more.

It's one thing about setting a high standard for cars being sold in India in terms of fuel efficiency and emission. It's a completely different thing when it comes to providing these efficient cars the necessary infrastructure to demonstrate that efficiency! And that is where we are lacking big time!

And to think that I would never have been able to quantify this had it not been for my car.