Intrigue Technologies Inc. has announced support for its Harmony Remote Control SST-768 and SST-748 devices. The company plans to show them off working with Macs at this month’s Macworld CreativePro Conference & Expo in New York.
Harmony remotes are programmable devices aimed at the home theater enthusiast market. The devices let you program series of actions to occur with the pressing of a single button, resulting in a series of commands being sent to your home theater devices. “Watch a DVD,” for example, will switch your TV to the correct video input, switch your receiver to the DVD audio input, and cue up the DVD itself for playing.
Intrigue Technologies CEO Bryan McLeod explained that Mac users are a natural extension of the company’s target market, because of their affinity for new technology. “We have been receiving a tremendous number of requests for this development and are expecting strong support from Macintosh users,” he said.
These two Harmony Remote models feature USB interfaces, and that’s where Mac support comes into play. Using the Web Wizard on Harmony’s Web site, you can program your remote to perform activities like the ones described above, or program it to understand how to interface with new stereo equipment you get. As a result, you don’t have to program in macro sequences to the remote control itself by hand.
You can also use programmable data from the Harmony Web site to display TV listings on the Harmony Remote’s built-in LCD screen, with up to 14 days of programming available.
Intrigue Technologies is recommending that Mac users buy the remotes directly from them “to ensure that the Mac compatible firmware is pre-installed.”
The SST-768 model retails for US$299, and the SST-748 runs $199.