I downloaded the official Android XBMC remote a little while after using another android remote control for quite a while.
When I first saw it I thought whats so special about this remote which makes it the official xbmc remote?
Well that was before one day I was watching Breaking Bad catching up with the seasons and my phone rang but not only that the show paused and a little xbmc popup came up saying exactly who was ringing with a little icon. I was so shocked I actually missed the call. This was followed with a text message from my voicemail service saying I had a new message. It was so seamless and I had no idea the android remote had this built in, so I looked through the settings and found these interesting options.
- Statusbar notification
- Show incoming SMS
- Show incoming calls
If that wasn’t impressive enough, the check list for features is something out of a dream. Here’s a couple of the most interesting ones.
- Control XBMC’s volume directly with your device’s volume buttons
- Manage multiple XBMC instances
- On incoming call, display who’s calling on TV screen and pause video until call is over
- On incoming message, display on TV screen
- Setting that prevents your phone locking the screen. You can apply it either for remote control only or all screens (or disable it completely)
- Cover art is shown where available
- Play and queue albums, songs, genre selections and much more directly without having to turn on your TV. For instance it’s possible to queue/play all songs from an artist but of a certain genre.
- Displays movie poster and actor thumbs where available.
- Play trailer from details page where available.
- Coming soon theres also some more really interesting features…
- Boxee compatibility
- Download media locally to device’s SD card
- Stream media to device
- Rating support in Now playing
- Last.FM integration
All this functionality has really made me give up the wii-mote as the preferred method of controlling XBMC. I’d suggest a couple more things like trans-coding (so you can take away a copy which isn’t multiple gigabytes), send to xbmc (bit like send to xbmc or xbmcfox), a locale plug-in (might be handy), a proximity sensor option (if you walk out the room for example it will pause or even stop after a while xbmc) and the ability to see additional media or even fansubs on the device its self.
