Couda’ Shoulda’: Bluetooth Home Theater Remote Controls

I just realized this: Bluetooth is 10 years young this year. The special interest group (Bluetooth SIG) was formed and the Bluetooth 1.0 specification was published in 1999. And in 2001, printers, laptops and hands free cellphone kits started to appear. From there, the sky seemed to be the limit: mice, keyboards, headphones, digital cameras, … – the list goes on.

But one application that seemed obvious never quite emerged – the home theater Bluetooth remote control. Traditional infrared remote controls require line-of-sight between the remote and the receiver on the device you are trying to control – leading to all sorts of couch potato acrobatics when something or someone gets in the way. And, oh the frustration if you try to hide your home theater components inside a cabinet.

Bluetooth seems like an obvious upgrade. It has approximately a 10 meter range – perfect for the living room. And it requires no line of sight – perfect for components in cabinets.

Sounds great! So, where is it? In 2005 I started looking around when I was shopping for a new HDTV and A/V receiver. Some manufacturers were adding serial port and even FireWire/iLink/IEEE 1394 interfaces to their televisions, DVD players, receivers, and other components for the wired transmission of remote control signals between devices. Cool. But you still had to use IR to communicate with at least one of those devices. But, I figured someone will eventually do this. So I set a Google News alert to e-mail me whenever an article was published containing the phrase “bluetooth remote control” … Silence.

Finally, with the release of Sony’s Playstation 3 in November 2007 a mass market bluetooth remote controllable device finally appeared. Sony wanted to pull out all of the stops in technological innovation so they gave the PS3′s Blu-ray player a Bluetooth remote control. Yeah! Except it wasn’t included out of the box. No biggie. It only cost $20.

And the PS3 Bluetooth remote works great! I can hide behind the couch, “point” the remote at the floor and it’ll still work. Finally! An inexpensive remote control that just works!

This should have been the start of something. But nobody followed Sony’s lead – not even Sony! WTF? Sony started borrowing PS3 features like the Xross Media Bar user interface and putting XMB into their A/V receivers and TV’s. But, the bluetooth remote control? Nope. Nothing.

So, why not?

Apparently, some would-be device manufacturers think that Bluetooth consumes too much energy. True, a pair of AA’s won’t last years in a Bluetooth remote as they could in an IR remote. But the batteries in my PS3 Blu-ray remote haven’t been changed in months. it doesn’t seem like a big deal.

Well, the Bluetooth SIG seemingly is coming to the rescue. On 22-July-2008, the Bluetooth SIG sent out a press release appropriately titled “NEW BLUETOOTH STANDARD BUILT FOR THE UNIVERSAL REMOTE CONTROL” which promised a standard for Bluetooth remote controls based on the in-development Bluetooth Low Energy specification. But 15 months later, still silence. Earlier this year on 20-April, Bluetooth SIG demoed some Bluetooth Low Energy devices. But absent from the demo, were any home theater applications. Sports and fitness devices, consumer health equipment, and even watches utilizing Bluetooth LE were shown. But no remote controls promised in the July-2008 press release.

So when will we see (if ever) a Bluetooth remote control? Is there any hope? If you know, post a comment!