Peel Joins The Hunt For iPhone As Universal Remote

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The folks out at Peel, who have been working for some time now on ways to help you better enjoy your television viewing, have offered up a whole new way to help you enjoy it by allowing you to convert your iPhone into a universal remote.

Now, not only will you be able to easily figure out what’s on television at most any given time thanks to their earlier released Peel app (which functions like a big and extremely handy TV Guide that constantly updates and allows you to switch between networks, time slots and program genres at the flick of a fingertip), but now, they’ll also be releasing a bit of hardware to go along with it.

While items like the RedEye Mini are dependent on a dongle that attached to the iPhone itself (and I’m not discriminating against the rest of the iOS suite here–I believe this also works for iPod Touch and iPad as well), the Peel version will depend on a tiny IR blaster–dubbed the Peel Fruit–that sits quietly on your coffee table or similar flat space near you and your sitting space from where you watch television. Then, the Peel sends instructions to the IR blaster, which in turn forwards them on to your various home theater gear, whether it be just a television or a complete system (no word on just exactly what all it controls, though word does have it that it’ll control a wide array of televisions, Blu-ray and DVD players, and an as yet undetermined “more”, so it may well be able to hook into your home theater receiver as well).

Thus, what Peel has done here is not only provide a terrific way to figure out just what exactly is on television, and descending directly from that just what you want to watch on television, but also a way to immediately access same from the same app.  This should actually be making RedEye very nervous.

There’s no word on release date or pricing for the Peel and its hardware cohorts, though no doubt couch potatoes everywhere are dying to get Peeled.