For those of you who have a home theater setup, i’ve got something you NEED to own. I recently bought an Xbox 360 (thanks to a big gift certificate from work) and finally got tired of the many remotes scenario. Neither my girlfriend nor I ever watched TV in the living room because it was such a pain to operate everything. Oh sure, i’ve had other universal remotes from various companies, but there was always something that didn’t work correctly. It was time for a change.
On a whim, we picked up a Harmony designed for the Xbox 360. I wanted to use the features of the Xbox 360’s media center extender and didn’t feel like using a wireless controller to do so.
At first, it was a bit troublesome, the wizard didn’t allow me to set up all of my devices, and it didn’t work exactly like I wanted it to. After closing the wizard and going into the manual setup, it all started to come together. Everything was working correctly and the remote was correctly controlling inputs, volume levels, etc, etc, etc… all with simple “activities”. What a concept! I hit “Watch TV”, and it knows that I need the TV, Receiver, and DVR on. And it knows that I want to use the volume on the receiver, channel on the DVR, and the first input on the TV. Everything is simple and easy. The BEST part of the Harmony is that it allows me to keep the technical complexity of my setup while allowing my girlfriend and others to operate the entire setup without a 30 minute explanation on how it all works! Oh, and it controls that damned 200-disc Sony CD changer that even my Sony universal remote didn’t work correctly. LOL
My hats off to Logitech! What a fantastic product! They have truly gone above and beyond the call of duty in the universal remote world. For those of you who don’t believe, run down and grab a harmony and check it out. You won’t be disappointed.
Check out the entire Harmony product line at the Logitech home page.