For my birthday, Cindy let me buy a new computer for extending our sage sever into the living room, thus creating a media extender. I have been very happy with the computer, but I have not been as happy with the keyboard. The description of the Belkin Media Pilot keyboard sounded very interesting and exactly like what I could want. Here is the belkin website about the keyboard.

Basically, the keyboard is suppose to be able to control the keyboard as well as all my other AV equipment. This is great for a Media extender, since I still have a lot of other equipment in my setup, but least of all my TV and Receiver. First of all, let me talk about using this device for controlling the computer, in that respect I have been fairly happy with it. After some initial problems of not realizing that the keyboard was in AV mode, I have got it working with my computer and things seem to be going great. I use it to do just about everything on that computer without any problems. The mouse is a little slow to move, even when I turn up the speed in Windows…

Now to the AV side… First of all, I have had a lot of problems finding the correct codes to use for my equipment. I have mostly JVC equipment, but the only device that I could get working easily was the JVC VCR. All the other equipment, I needed to edit the file that contains all the remote codes and add in ones to the JVC section that would work with my equipment. So I did get most of the equiment working, but I am still not sure if and how I can control other features of my equipment, outside of basical chanel and volume control. The documentation is very sparse. Switching from Computer to AV mode on the keyboard does not seem to be right on my keyboard. It might just be that I got a bad keyboard, but it jsut does not feel like the switch falls into place when trying to control the AV equipment. After that, the actual remote functions just do not seem to respond very well. Like I can sit there pressing the Volume up button, but it takes a while for the receiver to get the signal and turn the volume up.

I love the concept behind this device, I just do not think that Belkin pulled it off as well as they could have. Now I am stuck with a wireless keyboard that I paid too much for, I could have gotten just a wireless keyboard for less, but I was hoping for the AV control. I guess I will have to keep waiting and seeing…

-Matt