A decent home entertainment week

• Santa brought an iPod touch for my 8 yr old daughter. She was thrilled enough to head directly to the store to buy a case and screen protector with some Christmas cash. While there, I spied a price break on some blue Wii with a game. Our Wii died some time or another this year, so for $125, it was a done deal. I hooked it up last night and my daughter enjoyed getting reacquainted with Wii Sports Resort or something. I think the Wii that broke was $100 refurbished, so this was a relative deal and included now our fourth controller. Even if we only have a year or two with it, $125 isn't so bad.

• That may seem strange considering that Christmas also included an XBox 360 Gears of War edition. It was on sooper dooper sale during a Spring engagement with a large software company's company store. Since we had access, I went a little nuts buying just about one of everything including more games than we can ever play. It turns out that it wouldn't be my last trip to Redmond, so I ended up duplicating my efforts on one game. Woops. I traded a friend for a notebook dock and since I bought an extra Forza 4 and gave that to him, we were both happy. I've run cables for the Kinect and the power, I just need to finish the ethernet and setup the RF remote so I can keep it nicely hidden.

• In the midst of all of this, I finally got serious about setting up Zone 2 (house speakers in 9 rooms and the pool) for something other than iTunes/AirPort Express. I've been frustrated with iTunes' clunky interface for Internet radio for awhile. It wasn't until my DirecTV included a Pandora subscription that I got serious about figuring out the finer points needed to deliver this beyond the TV room. The key to Zone 2 on my Onkyo is that it will only accept analog input. Once connected to the audio outs, sound flows from the amp to Zone2 just as it did using the AirPort Express.

Accessing Pandora on DirecTV is a PITA. Menu this, down arrow that, wait to load now.. Ugh. I ended up using the LG BluRay player to access Pandora. Sign in is only once, then Pandora works as expected. Anything beyond simple navigation is not incredibly intuitive, but it's easy enough to add channels from a PC, Android or iOS device. The combination of effort is still better and the Pandora interface is worlds about iTunes' Internet Radio selections.

It's nice to have intuitive access to Internet radio for what was basically only a little research and even less effort. I wish I could get it done free and clear of my TV though. We normally hide the TV with company over, so it would be nice not to go through the steps of navigation with it on. I'd also like to put the power to fully navigate Pandora in the hands of any iOS or Android device in the house.

I am seeking your experience with Android or iOS devices as a remote for a Pandora player on a home entertainment system. This would allow two key things: Ease for the X chromosomes, and no TV glowing from behind the cabinets. I've seen Sonos, Roku, and Apple TV as hardware options with mobile remote control. Some here have Sonos and love it, but the full features of the device are lost given my hardwired speakers. I just need to hear about first hand use of Pandora without the need for a TV with any recommended device.

XBox installed. Live thingy signed in. (we also picked up a number of these 1yr cards). Kinect(?) set up (I guess) and two games that came with it downloaded (though not yet played). I did play some Forza 3. We bought Forza 4, but I figured I have them both, might as well play the first one first. Our daughter is dying to try Kinectimals. My wife wants to play Dance something with the Kinect.

In other news, I finally added my most intense "Activity" on my Harmony 1100 remote. Not sure of the model. Big square thing. Got it free with AMEX points like 5-6 yrs ago. The navigation for the LG BluRay- while better than the clunky DirecTV- for Pandora is still not the greatest. The Objective was one choice on the remote's LCD screen: "Listen to Pandora". I wanted the remote to then cycle through all the waiting for the LG to boot, come to home menu, Navigate to 'NetCast' (LG's online suite of apps like Netflix, Pandora, YouTube, etc), then select and activate Pandora- All automagically.

And that it does. I even passed my first (ok, 3rd) UAT. Wife selected the icon and then watched the TV as the macros navigated through. Zone 2 speakers fired up, and Pandora played the last station (Piano Music) throughout the house. Power Off works as it should, including the custom macro I created to kill power to Zone 2 on the Amp.

It was not without struggle. The Harmony Remote is one of the least intuitive things I have ever seen. While I was able to get a newer Harmony 1 set up with no problem this Summer, making changes to the breadth of options on this one are a trip down try-to-remember lane.