I, like many others, have pieced together a home-theater system over many years as I had the funds to allocate. Thus, my setup isn’t ideal, but it works and that is all I care about. Currently, my home-theater system consists of a 7-year-old Toshiba 36″ CRT, a 7-year-old Sony receiver (Dolby digital 5.1), a Dishnetwork satellite receiver, a ReplayTV DVR, and an Xbox 360. You may notice the lack of DVD player, and that is because I got rid of it a while back, finding that the Xbox (and now Xbox 360) work suitably as DVD players, and I really do try and keep my entertainment center as simple as possible. Despite these attempts at simplicity, my wife still would find it difficult to operate. I would be regularly asked to turn on the DVD player or play a show that the Replay recorded, etc. There were times where I would leave for the day, only to return to a TV that had been rendered unwatchable after an apparent assault on various remote-control buttons. But, I suppose having no less than 4 remotes can be intimidating for someone who isn’t enamored with gadgetry.
I heard about a reasonably priced universal remote control that might just solve my dilemma. To make it more appealing, this particular remote had buttons specific to the Xbox 360 (x, y, a, b). Of course, I am talking about the Logitech® Harmony® Advanced Universal Remote for Xbox 360. I won’t get into specifics about the operation of the remote, but I will tell you I have been perfectly pleased with this remote. It was a breeze to setup. The setup is done via a web interface. The setup wizards make things quite fool-proof. Once the setup is complete, the configuration is transferred to the remote via the included USB cable. And, for some odd reason, having the remote control connected to my laptop just seemed really cool. The real selling point for me, though, is the fact that once I got the menus just right and the settings just right my wife has no problem operating any of the devices in our entertainment center. She can effortlessy go from watching a DVD, to watching TV, to listening to the radio, to watching some recorded programs on hte DVR. And, what made things even sweeter was that it was very reasonably priced, especially after rebates.
As I recall, there was still a learning curve. Even with the Logitech remote, your wife still managed to render the TV unwatchable.
But I agree that the Harmony is a really decent remote. There were a few things I did not like about it, however:
- No RF functionality. Granted, very few remotes have RF functionality, but since Dish and DirectTV have tuners that use RF, it seems like a handy feature.
- Screen isn’t exactly the clearest. Despite the tasty XBOX green (it IS the Harmony Remote for the 360, after all), I found the display a little hard to read sometimes.
- I found the controls not very intuitive. The buttons are laid out in a way that I am sure is simple one you’ve learned it, but the fact that the same button can mean entirely different things depending on which screen you are on means you need to be careful.
- The learning system is just so-so in my opinion, once you get over the coolness factor. There are remotes out there with a simple ‘learning’ feature. All you have to do is point the original remote at it and press a button, and then press a corresponding button on the learning remote and the function is learned. No codes to worry about. Ever. No chance to get it wrong.
This remote, which I found on Amazon, has RF, learns from existing remotes rather than through codes, and can control up to 8 devices. Oh, and it’s only $60. One For All URC 9910 Premium Learning Line 8-Device IR/RF Upgradeable Universal Remote Control
This one is even better, with an LCD touchscreen, but alas, it’s unavailable:
RCA Universal LCD Learning Remote with RF for 9 Devices
Also, reviews to the first one make it sound like the firmware can be upgraded or edited. Seems odd.
Mitubishi used to make a nice simple remote you could program without codes.
This can lear from other remotes int the way you mentioned, but in my opinion, rather than a button-to-button mapping, it is easier to use the model number of a particular compononent. The button by button mapping would take a whole lot longer. The model number is failry easy to come by, no need to enter bizarre codes. Also, the learning curve was more due to the fact that I had used the wrong model number for my ReplayTV than any issue with the remote. Instead of looking it up, I thought I remembered the model number and used an older model number rather than the correct one.
One other gotcha had more to do with my satellite receiver than the remote. For whatever reason, if you change to a channel that you do no subscribe to, it displays a screen that cannot be navigated from except for pressing the UP/Down button on the receiver. However, I use the ReplayTV to change channels. The Up/Down on the replay will actually send the next channel number and not the Up or Down command. I chose to remove the unsubscribed channels from my Replay’s channel guide to minimize the possobility of this happening. When this did happen, however, it was still only a minor inconvenience as I had to switich the harmony remote froma ‘watching tv’ mode to ‘controlling satellite’ mode. Not a big deal. Its a great, reasonably priced remote, that after rebates and gift cards ending up costing me nothing.