Controloid (Free)

Summary

It ain’t easy for those of us who own a Dreambox of the Enigma-1 generation. There’s Enigmanoid for the newer Enigma-2 models—but what’s left for us? AnDream at best... which looks great, but it doesn’t work in every situation, e.g. if the WebIF is protected by a password. Or if – like me – you ‘only’ own a HTC Wildfire (result: force close). So what do my tired eyes spy in the Market, hot off the press? Could Controloid (Free) by the answer to all my problems?

Controloid (Free) controls your Dreambox with Enigma-1 via WLAN, for the moment sadly only for running television programs—but this is the first version, so who knows what’s to come and we can – hopefully – except a few nice surprises.

Controloid does what it does well: zap and control. Display EPG: synopsis in the program overview, in more detail if you press on the channel for longer.

You are greeted by the configurations the first time you start up the app, which makes sense as the app can’t do a thing without at least knowing your box’s IP address. All you need is IP, username/password (if required) and that’s it—won’t take more than a minute. You could adapt the EPG if you so wish (i.e. how many channels should be displayed in the channel overview). The pre-programming of 3 channels is pretty good, though. Lastly, you should pick a bouquet: there’s a display showing which bouquets are available, and once you choose it’s done in a jiffy.

Meanwhile, the EPG is loading in the background and as soon as you quit configurations you will see it in the overview.
 

Controloid (Free) design is basic but functional. You won’t feel confused as controls are very intuitive: tap on channel = switch to channel, tap longer = show EPG, tap or pull the drawer and access the hidden control elements (volume, on/off button); a second button closes the drawer. A few improvements could be made: e.g. bouquet selection could be integrated into the menu, rather than having to access it via configurations. But we hear that the developer is working on this issue, as well as integrating a second Dreambox. Again, keep in mind that this is the first version of this app.

Nothing fancy-shmancy, but it works and you can easily check all the relevant information. I’m hoping that record/play option will be included soon (as well as the matching film selection). The developer has announced that he’s working on that, as well as a radio program.

Controloid (Free) ran very smoothly and so speedily—the five star rating is absolutely well deserved!

Controloid (Free) is available free of charge. The developer got back to me so quickly, sorted out my problems within an hour, AND took note of my feature-requests that I’m happy to award the app five stars in this category also.