Gyration's GyroRemote vs. Fiire's Fiire Chief?

[Andy]

Hello everyone!
I've been looking into building my own Core for a couple of weeks now and I have a question on the remotes.

Has anyone used the GyroRemote from Gyration? Does it have the same functionality of the Fiire Chief?
Here's a link to each of them:
http://www.gyration.com/p-21-universal-remote-control-for-pc-media-center-and-audiovideo-functions.aspx
and
http://fiire.com/fiire-chief.php

They look very similar but I'm not sure if the same functionality is there. The GyroRemote is about $50 cheaper than the Fiire offering but I'm not sure if I'm going to get the same experience.

I sent emails and made calls to Gyration and Polywell and neither of them seem to know anything about the other.

Gyration also has an offering with the keyboard included. This seems like a great package but if they won't work well, it's not worth pursuing.

Thank you in advance for your responses!!
Andy

[danielk]

There is an ongoing thread in the Users forum on this...

The short answer is the Fiire Chief has different firmware with more features and will work out of the box, but the Gyration remote can be made to work.

[Andy]

Thanks danielk.
I did a search but I just searched the "Compatible Products & Services".
Here's a link to the thread in case anyone else lands here and thanks again for pointing me in the right direction.
http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=2308.0

Andy

[totallymaxed]

Hello everyone!
I've been looking into building my own Core for a couple of weeks now and I have a question on the remotes.

Has anyone used the GyroRemote from Gyration? Does it have the same functionality of the Fiire Chief?
Here's a link to each of them:
http://www.gyration.com/p-21-universal-remote-control-for-pc-media-center-and-audiovideo-functions.aspx
and
http://fiire.com/fiire-chief.php

They look very similar but I'm not sure if the same functionality is there. The GyroRemote is about $50 cheaper than the Fiire offering but I'm not sure if I'm going to get the same experience.

I sent emails and made calls to Gyration and Polywell and neither of them seem to know anything about the other.

Gyration also has an offering with the keyboard included. This seems like a great package but if they won't work well, it's not worth pursuing.

Thank you in advance for your responses!!
Andy

We have both devices and the only thing that seems to cause problems with the 'vanilla' Gyration MCE remote is 'follow me'. Everything else seems to work ok. Of course the button labels are different to the Fiire remote as well and that causes some confusion when using the Gyration.

[mortar]

Wow, I'd love to try out the Fiire chief but i'm not sure I can justify the $104 freight charge

[Amathus]

The Fiire Chief has the follow me button whereas the original Gyro lacks this function (also some labels are different) I have the orginal Gyro and it works a treat but I never use it - too may blasted buttons so I decided  why use this big fat remote anyhow? The 3 Button Gyro does the job.