Remote control having an optical indicia reader

DETAILED DESCRIPTION The present invention disclosed and claimed herein, in one aspect thereof, comprises a method for a user to access information on a network.
A remote control device is provided operating in a first and control mode with internally generated control commands and in a second and scanning mode.
In the control mode, an appliance at a user location is controlled by wirelessly transmitting the control commands to the appliance.
In the scanning mode, a machine recognizable code (MRC) information is extracted from an MRC using the remote control device, the MRC having associated therewith routing information corresponding to a remote location on the network.
The extracted MRC information is wirelessly transmitted from the MRC to a network interface device in response to the step of extracting.
The user location is then connected over the network to the remote location associated with the extracted MRC information, and the information downloaded therefrom.
The downloaded information is then displayed on a display at the user location, such that when displayed, substantially immediate feedback is provided to the user in response to the step of scanning.