Comments on: Wonderful Remote – Remote Control Your TiVo With Your BlackBerry Over Wi-Fi

By: Ed

Ed — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 03:47:39 +0000

A proxy would work but I bet latency will be a killer as well. I got a VZW broadband card and I sometimes get 1 sec latency according to XP ping. That’s worse than some satellite links I’ve used. Add that to all those hops you listed and well… I guess you get serious delays.

If you got a linux machine lying around you can set up xinetd to be a TCP proxy for port 31339 without having to code your own.

By: Frank Lynch

Frank Lynch — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 00:38:41 +0000

@Brandon:
I wish I had a better camera to record the video with! Here is a link to a screenshot of apps main screen:
http://www.wonderfulremote.com/wonderfulremote.png
I would of course encourage you to download the app and try it out. There is a 48 hour trial period where you can use it for free.

@Ed:
It would be possible to run a service on a PC on the same subnet as the TiVo then have that service open a port on the home router via upnp, or open a bidirectional connection to a web service that your bb would relay messages through. I am thinking about prototyping this but I’m concerned about latency, as you’d be going bb -> bis/bes -> wonderful remote web service -> home network gateway/relay service -> tivo.

By: Ed

Ed — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 00:02:32 +0000

Tivo probably limits remote access to the local subnet so wifi is the only option unless you mess around with address translation for inbound connections, something that is not supported in the average consumer grade Internet router.

By: Brandon

Brandon — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:59:01 +0000

Looks like a cool program. It’d be great if you could see what’s on the BlackBerry. FYI…you can’t see a thing on the BB screen of that video.

By: Frank Lynch

Frank Lynch — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 22:41:39 +0000

Hi Ronen,
Thanks for the write up. The Curve 8320 is now supported and we’ll be adding support for the 8820 this weekend.
Wonderful Remote connects directly to your TiVo via its telnet remote control interface over your local area network. This is why wifi is currently required. We are currently assessing the option of supporting devices without wifi, this would involve users running a gateway service on their home PC’s to relay commands from the cell phone network to the TiVo on their home network.
–Frank