This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 4:30 pm and is filed under personal opinion, personal review, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
You would think, for nearly $400, that a Monster Cable Home Theater and Lighting Controller (AVL 300 Home Theater and Lighting Controller) would do everything that you could want and more. Unfortunately, in my case the more is raising my blood pressure and increasing my frustration.
In all fairness, I have yet to call Monster technical support, and I will do that before I toss this technical powerhouse, but my initial impression is poor. First, it would seem that the Monster product uses the Logitech software and the automated internet setup is little more than an interface to select how your house is laid out (which rooms you want to control) and the exact model numbers of products that you have and want to control. In Monster’s case this can be a television, DVD player, or even a Monster controlled light switch - or pretty much anything else that takes a remote control. Once you’ve selected your rooms and equipment you’re supposed to plug in the remote via USB and it downloads your configuration. My experience wasn’t so fluid.
First, I did not buy any of the lighting control switches that start this process, and apparently a large portion of the actual functionality of this controller is to help control the mood. Users will have the ability to link tasks based on an activity - such as dim the lights, turn on the DVD player and television, set the stereo for a movie and pop the popcorn (kidding on that last one). I imagine, if you had your house set up in a way that this made sense, this could actually be pretty cool. As a relatively simple user, it seemed somewhat complex to me, and while exploring this I learned that you would have to be sitting in front of your computer and AV equipment in order to make this work successfully.
Next, for the devices that aren’t in the Monster database (which I think is the same as those in the Logitech database) you will have to point your existing remote at the Monster remote to program it manually. Wow, brings back the old days.
Finally, after going through this whole process and syncing the remote with the PC… nothing. It didn’t setup my rooms, it didn’t setup my equipment and right now the remote still isn’t working. I will post a follow-up to this once I’ve contacted Monster Technical Support.
~geek
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