ShowShifter Digital Media Gateway ShowShifter Shifts Into High Gear Douglas Smith
It seems that as soon as technology offers new ways to use a PC, great new products come out of the woodwork one after the other. ShowShifter is one of the first off the mark with an implimentation of some current innovations. Home Media Networks out of Edinburgh, Scotland, formed in February of this year, has developed a fine first application.
ShowShifter is a "Digital Media Gateway", a TiVo-type program for the PC, with features not available before. It has a very unique look and feel, as easy to use as the family VCR. Noticeable right off the bat is the ability to see all of the controls from across the room, which is definitely made for us older guys with less than perfect sight. Control the whole thing with just six buttons on a remote control. Yes, I really said a remote control! A general purpose infrared receiver picks up commands from just about any infrared remote after training the program, similarly to setting your home TVs, VCRs, or DVD players. After using the built in Infrared Training Module, control the whole thing from the couch. At present, PC-Commander from Concept-Devices and IRMan from Evation are known to work quite well with ShowShifter.
