The Evolution of Control - and How to Adapt

Most of us here remember starting our journey with electronics without the aid of a remote control. I know our very first television had the huge bulky knobs and no remote at all. Then we crawl our way into the realm of remote control - great invention that allowed us to avoid the cumbersome task of walking 5 feet and pushing a button/turning a knob to the station of our choice.

Until recently, all of these remotes (whether for the television, VCR, DVD, etc...) have all been infrared based controllers and require line-of-sight. Which means the remote needs to be "looking" directly at the intended target - and if the transmitter on the remote or the receiver on the device is impaired - you will have to resort to the pre-1985 practice of getting off your butt and doing something about the situation.

Enter technologies such as Bluetooth.

This allows us to not have a direct line-of-sight with the target electronic device - allowing for a whole host of new opportunities and ways of interacting with our devices. Surprisingly - quite a few people do not know that the Xbox 360 wireless controller does not need to be in view of the Xbox 360 console. Why don't a few people know this? Well - the main reason (I believe) is that we're so accustomed to anything that's wireless being line-of-sight, so we don't even give the concept a second thought.

So what does this mean? To me, this means that I don't have to have all of my entertainment equipment laying around in the room - but instead, I can store everything in a closet out in the hallway. It's cleaner looking, you don't have to put up with the annoying operating sounds of the 360 and you're free to worry more about owning the game instead of getting owned by some infrared beam being unable to see it's target.

Most people know about this functionality in the Xbox 360 wireless controller, but for those who didn't know - now you do!