By Verizon FiOS owners can get a new FiOS Mobile Remote app for their Motorola Droid or HTC Imagio. The application displays regular remote buttons, but also shows icons of favorite channels. The FiOS application also allows you to display photos and slideshow from the photos on your mobile device to your television. When you receive a phone call the device will automatically mute the TV and resume to the previous volume level once you end the call. Your phone links with your FiOS box through your local WiFi, and requires you to download a widget for the set top box.
You can download the application in the Android Market and then pair your phone with your home Wi-Fi network by opening up the Mobile Remote Widget on the TV and selecting either the Motorola Droid or HTC Imagio icon. You will then be asked to register your telephone number using the Widget, and you’re all set to go. Keep us posted if this works for you FiOS customers.There is no FiOS in my area so I’m stuck with Comcast for now but this seems like an excellent alternative to traditional television controls.
Just think how happy your girlfriend will be when you relinquish the remote control to her, but little does she know you can still control it through your Droid or Imagio!
cant you already do this with certain bluetooth recevers? i think the htc hd2 has a pretty advanced bluetooth receiver that can do this
I assume that’s not for Android users with other carriers?
I’d love to use it on my G1
I am a FiOS Quad Play user in the Philadelphia area and have a Droid and so I promptly installed this and went home for lunch to test it out. Setup was slightly buggy — my STB actually crashed and rebooted once, but within a few minutes I finally got it to synch up.
There’s still some known issues with the Droid staying connected if you set the security on the router to WPA2. I kept dropping my Wi-Fi connection. (That’s probably what caused my router to crash). If you leave it on WEP it should work well.
Anyway, the app works pretty well (although it was a 7 MB download — largest Android app I’ve seen). The actual remote control interface is admittedly a GIMMICK because it really doesn’t do anything the regular remote doesn’t. I guess it could be useful if you keep your STB behind a closed door but that’s about it, and even at that you have to boot up the app every time you want to use your TV.
The killer app IMHO is in the photo viewing feature, allowing you to pick any photo on your phone, flick it off the screen and 2 seconds later it appears on the TV. Pretty slick.
That said, the better FiOS Android app by far is the FiOS Mobile Remote DVR app that gives you full programming control over your DVR and a full TV guide that’s easier to use than the native guide. Now if only I could stream my DVR content to my Droid (like a Sling Box)…. Rumor is that will come later in 2010. (?)
Maybe Verizon will finally start bundling wireless/phone service with FIOS, instead of land lines, which I find to be incredibly weak sauce.
will this app be avalible for other android phones? i have the htc hero and i also have fios.would love to be able to use this app on my hero.
Doesn’t work at all, then again it might be due to using WPA2 security. If it works when I remove the security I will let you know.
Got it tonight. Took about 3 tries to sinq up but that’s par for the wi-fi course. Very very cool. TV remote isn’t much more then a novalty. But the ability to flick photos from your phone to your TV is what you’ll be blowin’ friends minds with. This phone (the moto droid) may be the first electronic device that actually gets better the longer I have it.
You can bundle verizon wireless phones with fios. It’s not well advertised. Call fios and ask about it.
It was a headache to set up:
– determining the set top box name involved checking the ip address in the menu against the devices connected to the network
Upon determining the name it did not want to work under WPA2, but it did work under zero security.
I then turned back on WPA2 and tried again and it worked this time.
I’m glad it’s working and I can see the benefits of this but the casual user might get stuck quickly and easily.
Agree w/ su2lly
Yes, the photo flicking in this app is really cool. You can “throw” any pic on your phone onto the TV at any time.
One odd piece is that you can type via your Droid into the FIOS Twitter or Facebook widgets. Since I already have FB and Twitter on my Droid, why would I use this?
I work in system integration and what this means is that there is IP control of the cable box. This is a big deal in my industry. Reverse engineering time as soon as I get phone that supports this.
I just set mine up last night and it worked great, no issues and worked on the first try. I agree, showing phone pictures on the TV is pretty cool
Recently, pictures from my cell phone have been showing up on my tv screen spontaneously!! I never downloaded this application, so how could this be happening? Can someone have hacked into my system somehow?
15 MB is WAY too much space for this App to take up on the phone. Twice as much space as Google maps? Really?