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GlideTV Navigator one-hand PC remote control

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By Alun Taylor (via reghardware.co.uk)

Review While hooking up a PC or nettop like the Acer Aspire Revo or Asus Eee Box to that huge flat-screen telly in your lounge for a spot of media playback or light web browsing is undoubtedly a Very Good Idea, the elegance of the set up usually takes a bit of a knock when it comes to controlling the thing.

GlideTV’s Navigator: leaves one hand free to hold a pint… or whatever

Yes, there are plenty of media PC-friendly wireless keyboards about but hunching over one of those in your sitting room is hardly the epitome of relaxation or style. The alternative is a fully fledged media PC remote control but they tend to look like someone has tried the cram the flight deck of an Airbus onto a Sky remote.

Enter US start-up GlideTV with its Navigator, a gadget which has been designed with two aims: to look the part when sitting on even the most painfully modern of coffee tables and to allow for comprehensive, eyes-on-the-screen-not-on-the-remote, single-handed control of your home theatre PC.

Aesthetically, GlideTV has hit the bullseye. Looking more like a smooth black object d’art ashtray than a remote, the Navigator and its charging cradle are visually very appealing. A fair bit of thought has gone into the basic design too. For instance, the contact points on the charger and controller are been laid out in such a way that whichever way round you place the controller on the base they mate up.

Not huge, either

GlideTV doesn’t state a weight for the Navigator but whatever the figure, the device sits in a sweet spot between knowing you have something in your hand and not feeling any strain no matter how long you hold it for or in what position. It’s comfortable to hold too, despite the lack of any overt ergonomic design.

So it looks and feels the part, but does it work? GlideTV’s main boast is that the Navigator can be used without the need to look at it and after a few days’ practice we’d say its has made good on that promise.

Sensible button layout

Much of this is down to the way the 17 buttons are located in the ‘dish’ of the device. The most oft-used media control buttons, for volume and file selection, are built into two three-button bars above and below the touch pad – which also doubles-up as a physical button in its own right. At the North, West and East points of the unit sit the power, main menu and search/keyboard buttons. So far, so obvious.

The remaining eight buttons form a ridge that surrounds the touchpad and perform the same functions as the arrow, Escape, Enter, backspace and right-click keys of a regular keyboard and mouse.

As the days passed and familiarity grew, we increasingly managed to access the majority of the Navigator’s functions with ever more first-press accuracy despite slouching in a comfy armchair with one hand dangling over the side holding the Navigator and the other holding a pint.

Crucially, if you rest the device in the palm of either hand you can easily reach any part of the control dish with your thumb.

Fits neatly into the charger

Typing one letter at a time on the full-screen virtual keyboard proved to be as quick and painless as you could realistically expect it to be, and was helped by the predictive-text suggestions. Opening the virtual keyboard was a simple matter of touching one button, but GlideTV also provides a handy Firefox add-on that automatically launches the keyboard when you click a text box.

The combined touch and click pad proved very pleasant to use with a firm and well-calibrated click-action while the pad surface itself felt comfortable to the touch even after prolonged use.

The set-up menu is well designed for TV viewing

We only experienced two slight issues with the Navigator. When trying to click on small hyperlinks, the action of pushing down on the touchpad sometimes moved the cursor off target.

A zoom function means this isn’t really a sticking point, but to zoom you do need to use both hands since it entails holding down the ‘function’ ridge key while swiping up or down along the right hand edge of the touch pad. In that sense, this gagdet is crying out for multi-touch: two fingers to scroll, three to zoom, for instance.

The other issue was the result of not checking we had the device the right way around in our hand. If you manage to inadvertently rotate the device, it takes a moment before you work out why your brain and thumb seem to have stopped talking to each other. It’s the one drawback of a symmetrical design.

Set up, though, is simplicity itself. Download the Windows or Mac OS X software from the GlideTV website, plug in the rather nondescript USB radio dongle, fire up the application and away you go.

The virtual Qwerty deck has predictive text tech

Hit the home button and the Navigator presents the user with a simple and easy to navigate home screen which provides direct links to selected applications and web pages. Out of the box and running on a Vista PC, our Glide showed links to iTunes, Firefox, Skype, Windows Media Center and Media Player. Adding new applications was the work of moments, though the control panel to do so wasn’t the most user-friendly of utilities.

Though the GlideTV menus and keyboard only work on Mac and Windows machines, the media controls will also operate with the PlayStation 3. Plug it into a Linux box, however, and you lose everything other than the basic mouse and scroll functions. Here’s hoping that GlideTV at least ports the virtual keyboard across to Linux at some point in the future.

Ready for action

Keeping on top of the latest developments in operating systems and media player software shouldn’t be an issue as the Settings page has a big friendly Update button on it. One update came down the pike during our test and installed itself without drama.

GlideTV supplies a mains charger, but you can disconnect the USB cable from the plug and power the cradle directly from your PC. GlideTV reckons a full charge will last for about two weeks.

Customers in the US can buy the Navigator for $149 so that should make it around £95 for those of us in Blighty. Wishful thinking alas. The UK price is actually £119 plus a fiver for P&P which strikes us as just a bit on the cheeky side.

Verdict

So, having spent £250 on an Acer Revo or such should you shell out half as much again for a funky remote control? We think the answer is yes. The GlideTV Navigator is, without doubt, a most elegant and effective way to control any computer that is connected to your telly – assuming you don’t plan to type your memoirs on it – and frankly anything that keeps a keyboard out of our lounge gets a thumbs up.

And the benefits of being able to navigate around your PC with one hand should never, ever be underestimated.

A well thought out, clever and stylish – if expensive – way to control that computer connected to your telly.

Suggested Price: £125

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