14 DAY TRIAL // Many interesting gadgets and devices have made their appearance during the 2011 Mobile World Congress, which takes place right now in Barcelona, Spain, but few are more useful than Gear4's UnityRemote which is designed to control any remote operated device in the home via your iPhone, iPad or iPod.
The device itself is a simple 2-inch tall cylinder with a shiny metal base and an all black plastic case that seems to follow the design lines set by Apple with its iPhone and iPad devices, while on the back of the unit there is a Power On/Off button as well as a micro-USB port.
This is used for upgrading the firmware of the UnityRemote, and requires the unit to be connected to a computer through the course of the update process.
As far as the operation of the device is concerned, Gear4's gadget is basically a infrared transmitter which can connect to iOS devices through Bluetooth, allowing its users to control a wide series of HDTVs, Blu-ray players and other home theater equipment.
The first step in setting up the UnityRemote is to pair the device with the iPhone. After that, you have to install the free app that comes with the gadget and configure it to work with your home theater components.
This is done by selecting the specific make and model of the devices you want to control from a menu inside the app.
The UnityRemite comes with tens of thousands of equipment codesets pre-installed (for TVs, Blu-ray players, DVD players, set-top boxes, and other devices), but if you can't find your specific kit of hardware throughout the list, there's always the option of manually configuring the device.
During the 2011 MWC we managed to spend some hands on time with Gear4's solution and everything worked out OK from our point of view.
Note: Fellow editors Cosmin Vasile and Alex Vochin are on the floor at the 2011 Mobile World Congress and are keeping us posted with pictures and live reports on the latest product previews and launches.
