Peel Turns Your Apple Watch Into A Universal Remote Control

Does it make sense to use your Apple Watch as a remote control for your media devices? Smart remote maker Peel thinks so, having just launched a universal remote control application for the Apple Watch which lets you operate over 400,000 models of home electronics, including not only televisions, but also DVD players, and even audio and streaming devices, like the Roku.

The Apple Watch app is actually an extension of the company’s existing smart remote app for iPhone. And while in a few cases the new Watch app will allow you to control your devices via Wi-Fi, for the most part, it will require the Pronto hardware just like the iPhone version does.

The Pronto 360-degree IR blaster is what turns the iPhone, and now the Apple Watch, into a smart universal remote control. A $49.99 piece of hardware about the size of a salt shaker, Pronto sits in your entertainment center to provide the IR capabilities required to operate your TV and other electronics. It also connects to your iPhone via Bluetooth Smart technology.

Meanwhile, Peel’s iPhone application offers a personalized TV guide featuring show and movie recommendations you’ll like based on your preferences and your past viewing behavior. Plus, the more you use the Peel app to tune into various programs, the better those recommendations become. The app also works to help you discover content across streaming services, like Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube.

To date, Alibaba-backed Peel has over 135 million registered users worldwide, the company says, and generates 10 billion remote commands per month.

Similarly, the newly launched Apple Watch application offers a smaller version of Peel’s visual program guide which you can scroll through right on your Watch’s screen. The guide will display the first three ribbons from the Top Picks tab in the Peel Smart Remote app, and, after you use it, it will display a “Channels You Watched” section, too. When you find something you want to watch, you just have to tap on the thumbnail image of the show to start your viewing.

The Watch app also lets you turn your devices off and on, control the volume, mute, and change channels through the app’s “Remote” section.

Peel’s Watch app actually quietly launched before the holidays, but wasn’t publicly announced until this week, we should note.

The company would not be the first to experiment with using the Watch as a remote control of sorts. Out of the box, the Apple Watch has the built-in ability to control the music on your iPhone, control your iPhone’s camera, or even control iTunes or the Apple TV.

Others have also rolled out their own remote apps as well, like BMW’s car remote,Telsa’s car remote, Pacemaker DJ, or the AMPLIFi remote for speakers and guitar amps.GoPro lets you use the Apple Watch to control its action cameras; Alarm.com lets you control your smart home from your wrist, as do others; and streaming media service Hulu lets you control video playback across a number of media players, including Apple TV. (To name just a few!)

That being said, while a wrist-worn remote control is a nice plus for current Watch owners, it doesn’t yet seem to be enough of a draw on its own to convince people to purchase an Apple Watch, if they haven’t already.

The Peel iOS app, which includes the Apple Watch app, is a free download on iTunes. The Pronto device is sold separately, and can be found at Amazon, Best Buy, NewEgg, and elsewhere.

Comments

The CC Aurora is actually pretty fun, as far as projectors go

I don’t review projectors. Projectors are boring. Even the good ones. They remind me of vacation slideshows and the film strips we had to watch in health class — neither of which I’m in a particular hurry to revisit in my adult life. That said, I’ve always harbored some germ of a notion that some day I might buy one, to compensate for being one of those weirdos without a TV set. There’s something undeniably appealing about a big screen TV you can break out during movie night and then stash back into the closest of your one-bedroom New York City apartment. XGIMI’s CC Aurora is the closest I’ve seen to fitting the bill — or, for that matter, being a projector that I could actually muster any reasonable amount of excitement about. From the looks of it, it’s kind of the perfect package for the apartment dweller: it’s compact, self-contained with a built-in speaker system and plays nicely with mobile devices. Clearly I’m not alone here, either. The product scored $170,000 on Indi...

How ad-free subscriptions could solve Facebook

At the core of Facebook’s “well-being” problem is that its business is directly coupled with total time spent on its apps. The more hours you pass on the social network, the more ads you see and click, the more money it earns. That puts its plan to make using Facebook healthier at odds with its finances, restricting how far it’s willing to go to protect us from the harms of over use. The advertising-supported model comes with some big benefits, though. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly said that “We will always keep Facebook a free service for everyone.” Ads lets Facebook remain free for those who don’t want to pay, and more importantly, for those around the world who couldn’t afford to. Ads pay for Facebook to keep the lights on, research and develop new technologies, and profit handsomely in a way that attracts top talent and further investment. More affluent users with more buying power in markets like the US, UK, and Canada command higher ad prices, effectively...

Uber, Google and other tech employees form Coalition of Black Excellence

When black employee resource groups from a variety of tech companies come together, black magic happens. More specifically, black excellence happens. The Coalition of Black Excellence Week, spearheaded by Uber Litigation Counsel Angela Johnson in collaboration with black ERGs from over 40 tech companies like Facebook, Google, eBay, Lyft and Microsoft, kicks off this Monday in the San Francisco Yay (Bay) Area. The idea for CBE Week came in part from Johnson’s experiences living in Washington D.C., and being able to attend events put on by the Congressional Black Caucus, she told me at Uber’s headquarters this week. “When I moved out to the Bay Area, I really wished there were similar types of experiences for tech,” Johnson said. “And I thought if we could bring together different black ERGs, or diversity and inclusion committees, or people who were interested in some of the issues the black community is passionate about, a lot of positive change and impact could come from that....

Hundreds Of Apps Banned From App Store For Accessing Users’ Personal Information

Hundreds of iOS applications have been pulled out of the App Store, following a report from analytics service SourceDNA , which uncovered a group of applications that were extracting users’ personally identifiable information, including email addresses associated with their Apple IDs, devices and peripheral serial numbers, as well as a list of apps installed on their phone. The applications in question had been using an SDK from a Chinese advertising company called Youmi which was accessing this information by way of private APIs, the report found. Nearly all of the developers were located in China so, for now, this appears to be an isolated incident. However, the larger concern here has to do with how long this activity had been taking place – and what that means in terms of Apple’s App Store review process, given that it hadn’t caught this suspect activity until being alerted to it by a third party. According to SourceDNA, Yo...

Intel announces the first 14 nanometre processor

At the Computex conference in Taipei, chipmaker Intel has revealed a fanless mobile PC reference design using the first of its next-generation 14nm "Broadwell" processors. The 2 in 1 pictured here is a 12.5" screen that is just 7.2 mm thick with keyboard detached and weighs 670 grams. The Surface Pro 3 – for comparison – is 9.1 mm thick and weighs 800 grams. It includes a media dock that provides additional cooling for a burst of performance. The next-generation chip is purpose-built for 2 in 1s and will hit the market later in 2014 . Called the Intel Core M, it will be the most energy-efficient Intel Core processor in the company's history with power usage cut by up to 45 percent, resulting in 60 percent less heat. The majority of designs based on this new chip are expected to be fanless, with up to 32 hours of battery life, offering both a lightning-fast tablet and razor-thin laptop. Intel is also delivering innovation and performance for the ...

Exciting Technology

Search This Blog