In the race to bestow absolute control over your home entertainment paraphernalia, the Blumoo device is a sort of a jack-of-all-trades standout.

Similar to the now-discontinued Griffin Beacon, Blumoo lets you control all your devices that normally work with a remote control — TV, DVR, Bluetooth player, stereo, etc — from an Android phone or iPhone. But it also does double-duty as a Bluetooth streaming device, giving you the ability to stream music to pretty much any set of speakers it’s physically connected to.

We had a little hands-on time with the Blumoo, and came away impressed with the device — but frustrated by the software. Also, unfortunately the Blumoo Android app is a few weeks away from availability, so we played around with its iOS sibling instead; we’re not expecting any major difference when the Android app eventually arrives. Here’s what we liked, and didn’t.

Microsoft has beaten Apple and Google to the acquisition of R2 Studios, a small home entertainment technology startup from the founder of Sling Media. R2 is famous for an Android app that allows users to control things like lighting and appliances throughout their homes, and its thought the company’s technology will help Microsoft push its Xbox console even further into home entertainment.

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported that Google was developing a home-entertainment system that streams music wirelessly throughout the home and would be marketed under the company’s own brand. The first thing that came to mind was Google’s Project Tungsten from last year’s Google I/O.