The PS3’s lack of an IR port is a problem that I’ve moaned about before, and I’m certainly not the only one. When you have excellent universal remotes that cost anything up to and beyond £200 and control dozens of appliances, from the TV and DVD player to the 360 and the lighting system, it’s not that appealing to have to spend £20 on a hulking great Bluetooth remote that isn’t even backlit.

Enter the IR2BT.

This isn’t the first way around the problem that I’ve tried. I bought a Darklite, which works mostly but co-opts the PS3’s first controller port, which is problematic for some games that require the controller to be there, and can’t fast forward and rewind any movie with BD-Java, which is a significant number of modern releases. Any one that has a loading screen before the menus load, essentially.

The IR2BT is notable as a Bluetooth-enabled way around Sony’s oversight that provides all the functions of the official remote. It’s a smallish box (size comparison here) with an IR receiver and a Bluetooth transmitter. All it does is translate the old PS2 IR codes – which any universal remote should support in some form – into Bluetooth for the PS3, and it’s even already in the Logitech Harmony database. That’s all most of us universal remote owners want, and it’s an elegantly simple way around the omission. Continue reading IR2BT: Infrared Control for the PS3 →