I am new to the home theater scene so I plan on starting with "beginner" equipment.

Looking into getting the AE3000 with a Greywolf II Screen.
But to the point I was intrigued by the the ability to connect to it via serial cable but that had me question a couple things.

First of all if you ceiling mount it would run a serial cable through and down? That could be a long cable and fairly expensive. I have seen some other options where you could mount an rs232 wireless server box and connect to through via your access point to but that is pricey as well.

I looked at some manuals and it seems the commands you can send pretty much mimick your standard remote.

So the ultimate question is, whats the purpose? Is it some high end commercial option that a home user probably would never use? And if so why is there? or maybe just the "Geek" factor of controlling it via your labtop?

Or are there programs out there that you can use to tap into this resource?

If you use it what do you do with it and how practical have you found it?

I guess im just really asking these questions to decide if its worth the extra couple hundred dollars to tap into this remote access.

Thanks
:confused:

Hi

An RS232 serial cable can be fairly long when only using 9600 baud.
The purpose is that you not only can send commands but get state information from the device. This is not possible with infrared.

I guess im just really asking these questions to decide if its worth the extra couple hundred dollars to tap into this remote access.

RS232 is not normally used for what you would consider "normal use". It is used to give custom installers a more secure way to control a device. Say that for some reason the projector doesn't respond to the IR command - you accidently covered the emitter of the remote, pointed the wrong direction, stray light from other devices messes up the signal etc. This would not be an issue if you use the factory remote, because you can just press the button again. If however you are using a complete, activity-based control system, you really want to make sure that the device actually turns on when you want it to, and turns off when you want it to. In this case, RS232 is a great tool: It's fairly easy to use given the functionality provided, it's reliable when used right, and it's relatively cheap to implement. For some equipment, especially surround processors/receivers, you get a certain amount of extra controls available that's not available via IR - one example being the possibility to set the volume at a specific point, regardless of where you started out. But not that many products actually deliver any real 2-way control. On some displays, maybe some projectors (can't think of one though), you get direct acces to aspect ratios, where IR only has an aspect ratio toggle. Just to give you some examples.

It's not worth it going down that route if all you want to do is simply control the projector, it won't give you anything fancy that you don´t get via IR, and often you will find custom installers who stick with IR on some products even though RS-232 is available, because it's quicker to program, and only use RS-232 on devices that may cause issues with reliability.

So, the quick and dirty answer: You use RS-232 if IR doesn't work properly, otherwise don't bother.