I have been doing a bunch of research on remotes, as I am simply at a point where I have way too much stuff and a table full of remotes that don't work well together. I wanted something that would handle my WD Live HUB, ROKU, Stereo, Blu-Ray player and TV and intermingle them smoothly (EX: When I am using the HUB or ROKU on the TV, to know that the volume should turn up the stereo not the TV etc). I spent a bunch of time on discussion groups for my various pieces of hardware, and it became evident that pretty much everyone will tell you to buy a Logitech Harmony Remote, but even that becomes confusing as they make 10 or 12 different ones. It all depends on what features you need, how many devices you want to control, if you want RF in addition to IR, touch screen or not, visual screen showing what device you are using and on and on...
After enough research I settled on the Harmony 700 which can handle 8 devices, and has a nice screen (not touch) at the top. Although it did take me 3 days to get it setup and one call to tech support, I am now very pleased with it, and I was warned it was really complicated but once set, you are good until you change hardware. Well that is certainly the case. The only major problem I had was getting it to change the TV to the appropriate input, but I eventually solved that by configuring my TV to not skip unused inputs. That way the remote could always move the same amount of inputs and get to the same place, regardless of which devices were actually powered up. It did take a while to configure completely, as I would discover a thing that either did not work, or a feature I wanted to add, I would re-attach the remote to my laptop and configure that feature.
The remote connects to your computer via a USB cable, and then you run the configuration software to make changes. Semi self explanatory, but I did need to test a bunch of things along the way. The software is well designed, and allows you to setup individual devices, as well as things called “activities”.
An activity is basically doing something that used multiple devices at the same time. An example of this would be using my WD Live HUB. I setup an activity for that, which turns on the HUB, turns on the stereo and adjusts it to the appropriate input, and then turns on the TV and changes that to the correct input as well. Then, you setup within the activity which buttons on the remote do things on which device. On the example above, I have the arrow keys, fast forward, rewind etc controlling the HUB, while the volume control and choice of speakers control the stereo.
The remote knows which devices are already on, so when I am using the HUB and want to switch it to my “Watch Roku” activity, I have it setup to turn the HUB off, but keep the TV and the Stereo on, simply changing the HDMI input on the TV to the one with the Roku on it.
It does everything you could want. One touch and it changes from ROKU to HUB and things like that that would usually take me several buttons on 3 remotes. Most impressively, if it can’t figure something out, you can just point your standard remote at it, and it reads the IR and inputs it into whichever button you want. All programmed from your PC over a USB port using their application. No codes, in the app you just tell it the make and model of your hardware, and it already knows over 225,000 different devices.
Control Individual Devices
Build activities that control multiple devices
Knows most devices already. Just type in the device and model number into the software
Learn commands from your existing remote
Make “macros” that are a series of button presses
Put your activities on the screen to see them listed graphically
How cool is this on a side note. The new Logitech Harmony Remote software allows you to make favorites for the TV stations you want, and then manually make icons representing them, and add them to your remote. Good thing I am pretty decent with Photo-Shop. Since I don’t get very many stations anymore after dropping cable, not a huge deal for me so I just added all of them, but another neat feature of the Harmony series and another reason I love this product.
Almost stepped up to the Harmony One which has an awesome touch screen and works with 15 devices, but couldn't justify the extra $80 just to have the touch screen (I don't have 15 devices) Anyways, if you have a lot of stuff, I highly recommend one of these gadgets. For $120 which seems like a lot of $$ for a remote, in three days I already understand why people love these things. Push one button and you are listening to your favorite radio station; press another and you have moved to ROKU and directly into HULU. Pretty awesome. Now I have a drawer full of remotes and my coffee table is clean again...except for the Harmony and my wireless keyboard for my WD HUB of course.
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