Podcast #1020: Wide Color Gamut and the YIO Remote Two

This week we explain what Wide Color Gamut is and how it affects your TV viewing experience. We also discovered a new remote that wants to be your Harmony Replacement. It's really sexy but it costs a pretty penny. Finally we discuss why you don't want to mount your TV over the fireplace. All that plus your emails and the week's news.

Wide Color Gamut

We mention wide color quite a bit when we talk about 4K TVs. But what does that mean? In general when we talk about wide color we mean "Redder" reds, "greener" greens, "bluer" blues. More specifically the color space covers 75.8%of the visible spectrum, the DCI-P3 digital cinema color space covers 53.6%.

What can you expect?

• The improvement in color will not blow you away, but you can tell in a side-by-side comparison.
• It's more pronounced in red and green.
• Some TVs will be capable of more colors than others, even if they are labeled WCG.
• Look for a percentage of P3 color to determine Wide Color capability. The recent Hisense UST Projector is capable of 107% of P3 color

YIO Remote Two

Another remote is on the horizon and it looks to be an elegant Harmony replacement. And by elegant we mean expensive . It's available on Kickstarter for a pledge of 369 Euros and delivers in July 2022.

From the Kickstart page:

With Remote Two you can control your smart home and multiple devices under one unified interface. No searching for apps on your phone. You get instant control at your fingertips. Remote Two runs fully locally and doesn't require subscriptions to function. Replace all your remotes with one and create activities to simplify control of your entertainment centre. Remote Two even comes with an open API, making it easy for the community to add support for new custom integrations.

With Remote Two, you can control devices via WiFi, Bluetooth and - through the smart charging dock - infrared (IR). There is no need for a hub, other than the one you already own. Remote Two connects to your WiFi network and to your home automation system and can control your devices.

The charging dock is not just charging the remote, but has its own smarts too. It has built in WiFi and Bluetooth to communicate with the remote.

It has infrared LEDs all around to make sure you get a good coverage. We ship an IR extender in the box, so you can use that to control devices inside a cabinet. You can choose to send IR commands to the extender, the built-in IR LEDs or both.

The dock can also learn IR commands from your old remotes, so if you cannot find the codes in a database, you can make Remote Two learn the IR commands.

The remote looks amazing. It's the combination of a remote with buttons and a tiny tablet. The buttons you would want to be physical are and stuff like automation, activities, and other functions can be mapped to the small screen. The only question is if it's worth the cost. We'll wait until July to possibly check it out.

You shouldn't mount your TV above the fireplace. It's actually a terrible place for it

Mounting a TV above a fireplace seems like the most logical spot. It's out of the way, looks nice and is often the most convenient place to put it in a room. However, there are serious issues with such placement. Full article here…