A remote to make all others jealous? Perhaps not, from what I am reading. According to Ascully.com, the Snapstream Firefly PC Remote is certainly cool enough I suppose. With that said though, the remote has one major strike working against it from what I’m reading.

Apparently, the remote can only be used when the Snapstream software is running. What is up with that? I mean seriously! That is not cool! Well, I guess it is their hardware and they will do as the please. I still can’t shake the feeling that this is a mistake though.

Watching television has always been somewhat of a challenge, that’s right, a challenge. You are a prisoner of the networks’ schedules, commercials, and torturous week to week waits for new episodes of our favorite shows. I was tempted to buy a TIVO. Foolish me. Monthly fees, a lifetime subscription? What do they think, that I have a bottomless bank account? TIVO is not an option. Something big has happened in our household that finally revolutionized the way we watch TV. All I can say is, HTPC to the rescue.

Being an avid PC builder I decided to look around the web for something I could put together myself that not only gave me the best features of TIVO but also enabled me to use spare PC parts.

My search brought me to Snapstream Media, the company who brought Beyond TV to the HTPC market. We have been using Beyond TV for the last several months right through the 3.4 beta phase and now the final version of 3.5 and it’s exactly the product I wished for. It records shows to my hard drive perfectly and also lets me watch shows downloaded from the web all on our 51 Inch HDTV in the main room. Once you have built an HTPC and installed Snapstream Beyond TV you soon realize that the clunky keyboard and mouse control scheme you are used to on your desktop just does not work in a living room environment. That’s where the Snapstream Media Firefly PC Remote comes in and that’s exactly what we are going to take a look at today :)