Amazon announced the Fire TV
yesterday, its entry in the streaming box arena that will battle Apple,
Google, and Roku for control of your living room. One feature grabbing
headlines is the microphone in the Fire TV's remote that delivers voice
search -- a far better way to search for content than slowly and
painfully selecting each letter via remote in the same way one composed a
text message in the late 1990s on a flip-phone.
I have an Apple TV,
and as any good consumer or tech blogger, I must weigh it and its
various charms against Amazon's new competitor. One feature that is a
wash, however, is voice search. No, the tiny Apple TV remote isn't
hiding a microphone, but if you have an iPhone, iPad,
or iPod Touch, you can use it to search Apple TV using your voice. And
unlike voice search with the Fire TV, which reportedly works only with
Amazon Instant, you can use an iOS device to search an Apple app like iTunes, as well as third-party apps like Netflix.
ScreenshotIt's
easy to set up an iOS device as a remote for Apple TV as long as all of
your devices are on the same network. First, you need to install the
free Remote app.
When you launch the Remote app for the first time, it provides a button
to set up Home Sharing. Tap the button and enter your Apple ID and
password.
With Home Sharing enabled on your iOS device, you then
need to turn on Home Sharing in iTunes or on your Apple TV itself.
Because I avoid iTunes as much as I can, I would direct you to simply
set up Home Sharing on Apple TV. Just go to Settings > Computers to
enable Home Sharing on Apple TV. (If you insist on using iTunes, here's
the path: File > Home Sharing > Turn on Home Sharing.)
Now,
when you head back to the Remote app, you should see Apple TV listed.
Tap on its icon and your iOS device will control Apple TV. Screenshot Like
the tiny remote that comes with Apple TV, the Remote app features a
sparse collection of buttons. Along the bottom are three buttons:
options, menu, and play/pause. On the blank area above the button you
can flick and swipe to control the on-screen selection on your TV, and
you can tap to select an item. When playing a video, you can swipe left
or right to rewind or fast-forward, while flicking down shows chapter
markers.
These gestures don't make it any easier to navigate an
Apple TV with an iPhone than the regular remote, but we've yet to
discuss search. After you use your iPhone to search for content, you may
never return to the Apple TV remote.
Screenshot
For
starters, when you go to search for content -- in iTunes or Netflix,
for example -- the keyboard will automatically appear. I don't need to
tell you that typing out a search query on a QWERTY keyboard -- even a
smaller keyboard -- is much faster than searching using the on-screen
letter grid with the Apple TV remote.
But, wait, there's more! Tap
the microphone button in the lower left, and you can search by voice
using an iOS device. Just speak your search term, tap Done, and your
words will appear on the Remote app search box and, more importantly,
your Apple TV. Screenshot Lastly,
there is one more advantage to using the Remote app rather than Apple
TV remote. The app does not require your iOS device to maintain a line
of sight with the Apple TV like the infrared Apple TV remote does.
In addition to Apple TV, the Remote app also lets you control your iTunes library and iTunes Radio on your Mac, PC, or Apple TV.
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