The new YouTube Remote app has gone live in the Android Market today and the program could eventually offer Google TV users a seamless way to turn their phones into a remote control.
The YouTube Remote app for Android lets you play Youtube videos within the app on your phone. That’s nothing new to smartphone owners but the cool thing is that once it senses a bigger screen with YouTube Leanback experience, you can resume watching that video on the larger display.
As you would expect from the name, the YouTube Remote app for Android gives you the ability to pause, play forward and search for new content. If you close out the video on your computer or TV, then it will resume playing at the same spot on your phone.
The controlling experience was pretty good, even over an EDGE connection. You merely associate an account with the remote program and you’re off to the races. Pauses, resumes, searches and loads occurred quickly with only a slight delay and connecting the controller is as simple as clicking on the program’s icon.
We saw some of this functionality with the Logitech Revue Google TV box but that was through Logitech’s own apps. By bringing this directly to Android users – I have no doubt this will be baked in to future versions of the platform – it makes these little, green robots far more capable of controlling media devices like the Google TV.
With that said, this app isn’t a silver bullet for turning your phone into a complete remote because it only can control YouTube content. That’s pretty obvious from the name of the app I’m still waiting for a single Google TV app which will let you control every multimedia device in your house with a few clicks.
It’s not that far away, though.
[Thanks to TechCrunch]