0Looking beyond the boxee remote-keyboard

For a long time I’ve been search­ing for the ideal HTPC remote con­trol. I want a fairly stand­ard remote, but with a QWERTY key­board on the back, or inside a flip/slide out part. I’ve been track­ing the options in [int­link id=“46” type=“post”]an art­icle from Jan-2010[/intlink], and even­tu­ally ordered myself a Boxee remote a few months back. The boxee is an excel­lent wire­less key­board, but unfor­tu­nately, boxee have opted to go the “Apple route” (aka dumbed down) on the non-qwerty side. There are a total of 7 but­tons, non of which is a power but­ton. There is also no “back up” type but­ton. This makes the boxee pretty use­less for Media Cen­ter 7.I decided that if I was going to get yet anoth­er remote, I wanted it to offer addi­tion­al fea­tures, as well as address­ing the prob­lems with the boxee. The 2 most use­ful options are to be pro­gram­mable (i.e. uni­ver­sal) and to fea­ture an RF com­muni­ation to the PC, so it can be tucked away out of sight. The remote I was most inter­ested in is the Philips Home Con­trol Dual / uWand, but I can­’t find any­where to buy that in the UK.  I’ve seen some pos­it­ive reviews of the Motorola NYX­Board and loc­ated a retail­er that ships to the UK.  £40 isn’t cheap for a remote con­trol, but the nyx­Board does offer both RF and uni­ver­sal­ity, as well as clearly hav­ing the required but­tons. I’ve ordered one, and am optim­ist­ic it will do the job. Its just a shame its a bit chunky, one of the nice things about the boxee remote is how slim and slick look­ing it is.