Snapstream’s Firefly is in some ways, perfect. The install is easy, the layout of the buttons seems logical, the Firefly software never crashed on me (with one almost-exception, which I’ll get to in a minute), and for most of the functionality it offers, it just worked.
Oh, what is it? It’s an RF remote control for your PC, specifically oriented for a Home Theater PC.
Snapstream sent me out a unit, as well as gave me an exclusive look at its “Snapstream Spotlight” suite of software, a bundle of services from other companies that offer crippled or demo versions to let you get a feel for their use; companies like Movielink, Live365, or NewsGator. Let me talk about the Firefly in general, for a moment, then we’ll get to the Spotlight.
Read the rest after the jump.
The Firefly software is clearly meant for use at home theater or television resolutions, with big, chunky fonts and simple up and down menus. Although you can use the Firefly is a “mouse mode,” complete with left and right clicking, the cursor moves so slowly that it is only useful when no other options are available. It sure would be nice if they’d let you tweak the settings.
Firefly’s software goes out and checks what programs you have installed that it knows who to interface with, and lets you select one for each of its five major categories: music, photos, DVD, TV, video. It does interface with iTunes, and except for the TV (I have no tuner on this box) everything was easily and intuitively assigned, although I couldn’t reassign the TV button to something it hadn’t although slurped up. It sure would be nice if they’d let you tweak the settings.
After that, everything is pretty much as you’d expect. You hit the button, Firefly either launches or brings up the window of the program you want to control, and you go. Two big, handy buttons on the top of the remote minimize/maximize and close windows, a handy feature I found myself using on lots of different applications, not just media ones. If at any point you want to get back to the Firefly application, a simple press of the brightly colored Firefly button in the middle of the remote brings you back to where you’d like to be.
I found myself, for the most part, using the Firefly as a quick volume control unit, since I was just using it with a PC and not as part of a home theater system. Being able to quickly press mute and silence my whole PC is extremely handy. Controlling the volume of programs was great, too, unless that program happened to be Windows Media Player or anything else Firefly knew how to control. The problem is that Firefly controls system, or ‘global’ volume, as well as application volume, and it knows its context too well. Since volume all the way up in WMP might not be anything near full volume overall if the global volume is down, to turn up the sound during a movie I would often have to switch to another application that Firefly couldn’t control, reseting the context to ‘global’ and change the system volume, then switching back. If there’s a reason that Firefly doesn’t just control the entire system volume globally all the time, I don’t understand what it is. I’d be nice if they’d let you tweak which one you prefer.
I like Firefly, and I don’t have a problem recommending it over most other PC remotes, but don’t expect it to work perfectly. I think with a little more time and some per-application focus, the Snapstream team could really make it a powerful device. But I get the impression know that they are trying to support a large number of applications without really taking the time to build a smart interface for each; something that will take time and developer cost, but I hope they see the value of it.
As for my exclusive Snapstream Spotlight review? Well, let’s just say, overall, I was underwhelmed. Not only was the audio and visual fidelity of the services they have teamed up with relatively low — even from people like Live365 that I know can provide better — using the Firefly interface instead of each company’s web interface meant that most of the time I was stuck navigating menus without all the features I wanted or even simple things like a way to jump back a menu. The Live365 interface actually gave me my only almost-crash, too, when a radio stream refused to quit playing no matter how many times I hit stop. I had to kill the application to get it to leave me alone. It’s mostly a marketing feature, and if it worked well enough to actually try out the services, they might bring in some new customers, but it needs a lot more work, and for the time being I can’t recommend it. Of course, if they’d just let you tweak the settings a little…
Read [Snapstream]
