Song Of The Day: Beautiful Day Artist: U2





After Time Warner’s Blue-ray announcement at the CES 2008 and the Blu-ray movie promotion, I decided to buy a PS3. With the 5 free Blue-ray movies, at a typical $30 a pop, the deal just seemed too good to pass up.

However, there was one really annoying problem with my new-found Blue-ray player: no IR support. This meant that EVERY aspect of my system could be controlled by my universal remote, except the PS3 - ugh!

So I searched around and found a couple solutions:

However, I didn’t want a new remote and none appeared to support power on/off of the system. Who wants to walk 3 yards to turn the PS3 off and on when everything else does the right thing. How dare Sony prompt me to exercise. :)

Well, for those like me wait no longer. There is a device for $50 that supports playback and power on/off capabilities, all from a universal remote like the Logitech Harmony 880.

More after the jump…

Fortuntely, schmartz.com has a solution.

Back in January, I decided to give the solution a try. They were backlogged from the holidays, but I received the device this week, connected it, configured it, and it works great! Now, I enjoy all the couch-potato satisfaction of one universal remote for TV, DVD, and console functions (i.e., Blue-ray playback from console).



Copper conductor transfers signals from USB

Initially, one has to place a copper square on top of the power on/off button, and then connect a wire with a copper end to it from the USB adapter. A black sticker covers the connections on the power on/off button–not too bad after it was all done.



PSP needed to configure Remote Start

However, the configuration did require a PSP (Playstation Portable) for remote play pairing and configuration of the PS3’s remote start, which allows a universal remote to power on the device. Fortunately, I had a PSP handy for the task. This step was the most complicated, after all the network settings and network updates took effect (i.e., for update with Remote Start), but within an hour it was complete.

The solution may not be for everyone, but for those that have a universal remote, have access to a PSP for configuration, and the $50 to spare, this thing may be what you want. As the company streamlines its manufacturing, I’m sure the price will drop as well.

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