Logitech Harmony Remotes Owners

[imprex311]

I have been looking for a remote to control my home theater system. The components to control are as follows:

Sharp 37" 1080p tv
Samsung upconvert DVD player (Divx support)
Sony Blu-ray player
Sage TV HD set top box
Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD player (cheap movies after the fall of HD, couldnt resist)

and a future upgrade of an Onkyo Receiver, but I havent decided on the model and speaker set yet.

I found that the Harmony series remotes will setup everything rather conveniently but I really do not like the event based control of "watch a DVD" or other pre-programmed set of commands. So my question is can I use the Harmony remote like a standard universal remote where I select which component to control, and can control it as I please, or am I locked into the event based control?

Thanks in advance.

[crackinhedz]

I have a Harmony 880 (Love it!)

had to get it because of the LCD display, so my wife can figure out whats going on!


...anyways, there is an "Activity" button to control the different activities...but there is also a "Device" button for complete control over specific devices in your system.

[crackinhedz]

also you can re-name activities...

"Watch a DVD" for me is now "Bluray/DVD"

[tilapiah6]

Originally Posted by crackinhedz

also you can re-name activities...

"Watch a DVD" for me is now "Bluray/DVD"

I have two for my PS3, one for Blu-rays and one for listening to mp3s in 7ch surround: PS3 Movies and PS3 Music.

OP, to answer your question, the Harmony remotes are FULLY customizable to your liking. You can program the 'Activities' to do anything you desire, to include putting the television on your favorite station when you select Watch TV.

[SDBlu]

Originally Posted by tilapiah6

I have two for my PS3, one for Blu-rays and one for listening to mp3s in 7ch surround: PS3 Movies and PS3 Music.

OP, to answer your question, the Harmony remotes are FULLY customizable to your liking. You can program the 'Activities' to do anything you desire, to include putting the television on your favorite station when you select Watch TV.

So that being said...the remote can control things such as stereo mode and multichannel mode on the receiver as well??? like in your example above...when you set it to PS3 movies---it sets your receiver to the listening mode of ur choice????

[UKTruBlu]

I got given a harmony control for xmas by my uncle, and have spent a good 2 hours sorting it out, and i think its the best universal remote i have ever owned.

Fully recommend it, especialy for the touch screen control. which is where you find the the control for each device added, the only device i can't have is he PS3 because its bluetooth control not IR.

But it means i've gone from 6 remotes to 2!!!!!!

[tilapiah6]

Originally Posted by MarcosG

So that being said...the remote can control things such as stereo mode and multichannel mode on the receiver as well??? like in your example above...when you set it to PS3 movies---it sets your receiver to the listening mode of ur choice????

Yes. Absolutely. Not only that, and this usually isn't the case, but if by chance the Harmony software isn't able to locate a certain button for a certain device, you can make the remote 'learn' the command and name the learned button anything you want. I had to do this with the 'Scene' buttons for my Yamaha receiver, but it was incredibly easy. Feel free to contact their customer service also. They're very friendly and knowledgeable.

[akprashanth]

Originally Posted by crackinhedz

also you can re-name activities...

"Watch a DVD" for me is now "Bluray/DVD"

Hey, how do you rename the activities. i am using harmony one and would like to rename activities.

[Steve]

Originally Posted by akprashanth

Hey, how do you rename the activities. i am using harmony one and would like to rename activities.

You can rename all your activities as well as your individual devices. For example my Xbox 360 doesn't display as game console, but 'Xbox360'. You just go under the activities tab and for the specific activity click on the 'settings' button and there will be an option for renaming the activity. It's the same for individual devices as well. Go under the devices tab and for the specific device click on 'settings' and select 'rename device'.

[kingofgrills]

Originally Posted by crackinhedz

I have a Harmony 880 (Love it!)

had to get it because of the LCD display, so my wife can figure out whats going on!


...anyways, there is an "Activity" button to control the different activities...but there is also a "Device" button for complete control over specific devices in your system.

+100. This is exactly why I bought the 880 for my home theater room - so my wife and son could operate the system without me. It works great for making things easy, and I highly recommend it.

If you search around online, you can find good deals on the 880.

[xxjjkat7]

Logitech Z5500 does this thing decode or encode DTS? or Dolby Digital?

I have the Logitech Z5500's connected via Optical to an HD cable box as well as a ps3, i cant get DTS audio or Dolby Digital either when utilizing either playback device, all i get is stereo 2.x


I want to connect my Logitech Z5500 to a receiver is that possible?

Logitech Z5500's has its own control pod though, i want to connect it to a receiver so i can receive DTS on my HD cable box and PS3

[blujacket]

Just got the One Saturday. The screen was blank, I figured the battery was just dead and wouldn't work until charged. 24 hrs. later no go. I happened to bend the remote, the screen came on. Shorted lcd screen. Luckily I bought local and was able to exchange for a new one. I love this thing, nice to not have 5 remotes now.

[Infrared Sight]

I have a Harmony 676 and I have loved every minute of it. The remotes do have a learning curve once you get it because it is not like anything else. Once you do get the curve, you can program it to do mainly anything you want. Get one now. Run don't walk.

[taipan70]

Originally Posted by Infrared Sight

I have a Harmony 676 and I have loved every minute of it. The remotes do have a learning curve once you get it because it is not like anything else. Once you do get the curve, you can program it to do mainly anything you want. Get one now. Run don't walk.

I really like my 890 though I do wish the buttons were arranged a little differently. The Harmony One looks very nice!

[Johk]

Hey guys, just got my new remote last Monday and it's really great!

So here's a quick "review"...

The remote is a refurbished unit. I doesn't come in the original packaging but rather a smaller carton box. However inside everything is neatly packed and sealed and all items (specially the remote itself) were in perfect condition (everything new without a scratch).

Out of the box, the battery had enough power to try the remote without having to charge it before hand. Programming the remote, I was upgrading using my configuration for the 550 (I will replace the 520 with the 550 in my other setup) and it worked great! The software did update the firmware of the remote and after a while, I was ready to go.

Starting activities was similar to what I'm used to with my previous harmony remote but with some additional sound effects. Push "Watch TV" and every components start up and go to the determined inputs. I'm using a Scientific Atlanta 8300 PVR to watch TV. While everything was working properly, the "List", "A", "B" and "C" buttons were greyed out. I was not surprised about this since I already read on some forums that for that activity to work properly you had to create a new activity manually and select the something that was like "watch TV (PVR)" (sorry I don't remember the exact name but it seems that the software might be making a difference but using the DVR to watch TV as a opposed to using the DVR to watch TV and watch recorded programs). Anyway, I set up the new activity and while I was at it I created my "favorite" channels and creating some icons for some Canadian stations in the process (which is really easy to do using photoshop, the template from iconharmony.com and the .png channel pictures from lyngsat-logo.com. Updating the remote once again and now the PVR functions were working properly. The main page (Play/Pause) (or layer) for the PVR featured the "List", "A", "B", "C" buttons on the left, the "Menu", "Guide", "Info", "Exit" and the center featured the "Play", "Pause", "Record", "Fast forward", "Reverse" and "Instant Replay" if I remember properly. There is a layer (#) to bring out the numeric pad to enter the channels, a layer (star) for custom buttons and finally a layer (heart) for the channel favorites. Now the favorites are really nice, allowing to program 3 pages of 8 favorites a small icon of the channel and a short description. Without the favorites entering the channels with the numeric pad layer would be actually a downside from having less buttons per screen. Finally the hard buttons worked great with the directional arrows performing essentially the same function as the arrows on the standard remote. Another activity that I had was "Play PS3". For this function I use an IR dongle (blu-wave from Niko) since the Harmony 1000 has no bluetooth capability. As with the 550, the PS3 has to be powered on manually but after that I can basically control the PS3 as a normal player. On the main screen, I have the standard play/pause/stop/skip/ff/rw as for other players and just to the right of it I set the "square", "triangle", "circle" and "X" buttons of the ps3 controller on the main screen. This allows me to control video playback and to navigate the XMB could use to control the video playback on the ps3 which is basically what I need.

Now, about the remote itself. Out of the box the screen was really bright (I guess you could call it "torch mode"). Pressing on the tools icon on the first page allows to reduce the brightness to a more normal level (for me at the minimum setting) and to adjust the delay for the screen to shut down. There is also a calibration menu for the screen were you basically point to the 4 corners and to the center of the screen. Using the touchscreen is really different from using hard buttons and takes some getting used to. The sensitivity of the screen is good as it won't activate something if you barely touch the screen, instead you need to press a bit on the screen. The buttons layout are great even if they are not customizable (the functions associated to the buttons are but the overall layout isn't). This would have been a plus for this remote since one of the main advantage of a touchscreen instead of hard buttons would be to display basically the button layout you want. Anyway this is not a problem for me since the layouts associated with the components I used work really well. The range of the remote also works great for me (from a distance of 6' 3/4"). I don't use or plan on using the rf adapter so I can't comment on its abilities. The z-wave compatibility would have been great and if they kept it I would have probably bought a z-wave dimmer (since my dimmer is not in line of sight). But since Logitech decided to pull the feature I guess that if I really want to use it sometime, I will have to by an IR to RF device. The horizontal layout of the remote fells different and requires two hands to operate, this is a little bit different than a wand remote and in a way it can be a bit slower to use.

From other reviews, I heard people had some problems with the RF and the sequences (and maybe other bugs in the interface). Since I'm not using RF and sequences, I guess I'm not concerned by those glitch but I think Harmony has also come a long way from the launch of the remote.

In conclusion, the Harmony 1000 is a great remote. It works well and has a great interface. At a 240$ CDN price point, I think it's a great deal. However at the normal price of 500$ CDN, the Harmony One (going for 280$ CDN) would be in my opinion a better choice over the 1000. In fact, if you don't need the RF-extender or if you want a more ergonomically one hand solution, the Harmony One (or another Harmony for that matter) would be a better choice over the 1000. That being said, the Harmony 1000 is a great remote. Users will find it easy to use with the big touchscreen display and the simplicity of the controls. However users who prefer one-hand operation and more hard buttons to work with will be better off with the Harmony One or another less expensive model like the 550.

[JimShaw]

Originally Posted by imprex311

I found that the Harmony series remotes will setup everything rather conveniently but I really do not like the event based control of "watch a DVD" or other pre-programmed set of commands. So my question is can I use the Harmony remote like a standard universal remote where I select which component to control, and can control it as I please, or am I locked into the event based control?

Thanks in advance.

On my 1000, you can also controll each device separately and I am sure you can with most of the Harmony remotes

[olds403]

Just upgraded from the 520 to the One. It is awesome. I even downloaded channel icons for favorite channels to display on the touchscreen. Love this remote.

[Purplegrasshopper]

The 880 and the One are the same price on Logitech's site. I'm sure prices will vary at different retailers.

Since they are the same price, why get one over the other? (no pun intented)

Other than touch screen on the One, can't see a difference.

[joegs300]

id love a logitech remote but i cant justify spending hundreds on a remote when i can just press power on three seperate remotes for free. =[

[kpkelley]

Originally Posted by joegs300

id love a logitech remote but i cant justify spending hundreds on a remote when i can just press power on three seperate remotes for free. =[

You don't have to spend hundreds, you can get a Refurbished Harmony 520 for $40.