My iPhone has officially changed the way that I use my entertainment center forever.  I had an old dell running a bloated and malware infested copy of windows XP, sitting in a closet, collecting dust.  To be honest, for quite some time, I think that was the best place for it.  Then, I was lent an LCD TV by my mother (we can’t all be that lucky can we!).  This prompted me to build a Home Theater PC (HTPC).  Well, let’s say that I am cheap, and just couldn’t commit to any hardware until I ran a trial.  That trial was the Dell.  I figured that I would load it up with home theater software and it would run really slowly and perform miserably.  I was wrong.  With no malware and bloat on the machine, running nothing but airfoil speakers, vlc, tightVNC, and boxee, the old black and grey beast flies.  It is a P4 3.2 with 1Gb of RAM.  The machine has integrated 5.1 analog output and DVI.  All I can say is that it was not a joy to control, and my living room looked terrible with the wires running everywhere.  An old USB Bluetooth dongle made life without wires nice, and the Apple bluetooth keyboard and mouse look slick to boot.  But, when laying on the couch, enjoying a beer, nothing is worse than fumbling with a mouse and keyboard.

Then comes the iPhone.

First of all, let me say that by now we have all heard about the iPhone.  However, something that has blown me away has been the ability to use it as a remote control.  Sadly, it doesn’t control my TV, but when using a computer and dedicated receiver there is very little that needs to be frequently controlled.  The vlc remote works as advertised and, with the free version, allows for basic control of the application (pause, volume, skip).  The more exiting app is the boxee remote.  It is free, as is boxee, and allows you to control boxee with either gestures or hard buttons.

All I have to say is check out the coffee table, and then kick back and enjoy some media.