Software

A big part of this iMON VFD is the software. There are two areas, one for driving the display and one to use with the remote control. I want to go a bit in-depth at this point, as this is an important aspect of the overall package.


I inserted the CD and followed the standard installation, which took about five minutes. As soon as it was done a pop up showed, asking me which remote I had. It is nice to see that SoundGraph has placed pictures next to every choice here, making the selection a snap.

As soon as the iMON software was started for the first time, I was notified that there was an update available. After clicking yes, the website that opened up revealed some interesting information. I highlighted the text in the screenshot above. It seems that some well known companies are using SoundGraph VFDs in their devices. Silverstone and Cooler Master have a few media center cases with two-line VFDs, which seem to be supplied by SoundGraph. Thermaltake has a "media lab", which comes with the exact remote control and a two-line VFD for the drive bay. So even Thermaltake seems to get these parts from SoundGraph.


After the installation was complete, all the hardware worked. I did not need to set anything else up. The display showed all kinds of information and the remote worked right of the bat. As soon as I started iMEDIAN, which is a home entertainment software, I was taken through the setup step by step. After being greeted I was asked if I wanted to search my hard drive to map any media file available. This screen was followed by a a choice of using iMEDIAN to watch TV or if I wanted to use my present TV tuner software. SoundGraph recommends the use of the TV hardware's software instead of its build in one, as this feature only supports a limited number of hardware.


I wanted to watch TV using iMEDIAN, which then led me through a very easy to understand setup to select my hardware and country region so it would find all available channels. My Pinnacle PCTV Stereo TV tuner uses a Phillips chip. Pinnacle only supplies BDA drivers, while iMEDIAN works with WDM drivers. So I was not able to find any channels and the TV preview screen stayed green during the entire search process. It should be noted that SoundGraph just recently started supporting TV tuners within their own software and they are still testing different tuners for compatibility.


After the initial wizard was done, a clean iMEDIAN interface spanning my whole 24" Dell LCD showed up. I was already able to select each menu with the remote control and open up movies and music. The installation and setup was incredibly easy and should be no problem for novice users. The remote control hat 2 specific buttons, which made the navigation very simple. On one hand there was the "Application Launcher", which brought up an window from which different application could be launched with the remote. This list was completely customizable. On the other hand there was the "Task Switcher", which worked just like the Windows Task Switcher, but with the use of the remote.


The second part of the software package is a program called iMON VFD Control panel. Here I could set the information that was to be displayed on the VFD. There are 7 options here. The "auto" option just cycles through all the different display modes. The entire setup can be customized by hitting the options button. Once hit, a window with a tab for every display mode will opened up. There you can change almost every piece of information display on the VFD.

Let's take a look at the VFD in action.