X-bit labs

Thermaltake Bach and Mozart HT PC Review (page 9)

Category: Multimedia

by Vasily Melnik

[ 01/28/2006 | 06:17 PM ]

Part 2: Software and Settings

So, we’re dealing with a hardware & software package that includes a VFD display and a remote control with their software and the multimedia shell iMEDIAN. We’ve already discussed the hardware section of the package, so now let’s get closer to the main constituent of any HTPC, its software.

The remote control has been described above, and this section is about its functionality and software settings. The remote control is set up through the iMON Manager which you’ll find in the system tray after the OS has booted up. The Manager’s main window offers four buttons:

The Go to tray and Help buttons are self-explanatory, so we’ll focus on the remaining two. The dialog window that opens up after you click the Setup button consists of five tabs tat contain keyboard and remote control settings. On the first tab you will set up keyboard shortcuts and assign actions to the remote control buttons in a particular application.

The number of applications is indefinite – the user can add more programs or remove them from the list as necessary. There are initially presets for three programs: Windows Media Player, Explorer and Windows Messenger. Adding an application is as simple as two mouse clicks – just create one more profile and specify the parameters. The second tab contains OS commands.

The remote control can be used to issue keyboard and mouse commands as well as for power management. You can’t add more commands, but you can change the keyboard shortcuts and the assignment of the remote control buttons for the commands already in the list. Moreover, we could only change the function of the middle mouse button in our case, but this is in fact reasonable as the other buttons are duplicated on the remote control.

Additional Windows commands can be set up in the separate Customized Windows CMD tab: