button for entering URLs (you have to press the Fn and M keys at the same time to get the dot).Īlso, I’m not convinced normal users really want to access the Web on their TVs. For example, for a product that relies heavily on the Web, it’s odd that there’s no dedicated. Typing in URLs on the aforementioned remote keyboard wasn’t much fun, though. Browsing with Chrome went smoothly for the most part, although I sometimes ran into problems trying to use scrollbars. But several other buttons are disabled when you’ve activated the cursor, including some of the colored diagonals on the touchpad. You activate the cursor using the cursor key that’s next to the microphone key on the bottom edge, after which the navigation touchpad functions like a regular touchpad. If that all sounds a tad confusing and not that intuitive, that’s because both are true.Īlso preinstalled is a full-featured version of the Chrome browser, allowing you to browse the Web on your TV. You can customize the home screen by moving, adding, or deleting apps and widgets using the remote. Alternatively, you can access most functions by pressing the home key on the remote, scrolling to the right, and then selecting the All Apps icon. ‘Turning’ the cube sideways brings up the options for each category-channels, players, or apps. Rotating it up and down essentially scrolls through its main menu options, which include screens for accessing various media types, games, social networks, and so on. Once setup was complete, the main user interface appears-and it’s a cube. And from that location, I was never able to get the remote to control the volume on my AV receiver. Usually I can place an IR transmitter pretty much anywhere on the box, but it took a lot of tries for me to finally locate a sweet spot on my Comcast Motorola box. I also had a lot trouble setting up the IR blaster with my cable box. However, the remote has only one power-on button for an external device, and you have to choose between using it for your TV and the cable/satellite box. Once you’ve connected all the cables and the AC adapter, you power on the Cube with another button on the remote, which launches a brief setup routine, during which you adjust the resolution and screen size of the interface, verify Internet access, specify your TV service provider, and set up control of your cable/satellite box, TV, and AV gear. The remote also has colored diagonal bars, which you use for various functions much the way other remotes provide colored context-sensitive buttons. I found the touchpad to be sensitive, and the mechanical up, down, left, right and OK/select buttons were also responsive. The hybrid touch-mechanical keypad, which takes up about the top third of the remote in navigation (portrait) mode, works quite well, however. I also found the keyboard’s smallish, rubbery keys uncomfortable for touch typing: It was difficult to tap them head-on and I found myself using the edges of my fingertips. Unfortunately, the button on the edge is too easy to press inadvertently when you’re using the navigation side of the remote. You initiate voice searches by pressing one of the remote’s two microphone buttons-one located on the navigation side of the remote, the other set into the bottom edge of the remote when you’re holding it for typing on the QWERTY keyboard. The Cube’s somewhat thick candy-bar remote is one of the more unusual Google TV remotes I’ve seen, combining not only fairly standard navigation and playback buttons on one side and a QWERTY keyboard on the other, but also a hybrid touch-sensitive and mechanical navigation pad, plus support for voice searches and a dedicated Netflix button.
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