Like many nerds, I enjoy my entertainment system; so much so that I tend to have an overabundance of remote controls lying around. My main entertainment system is not massive, containing a mere 5 devices, and yet I always needed 2-3 remotes to control everything. I've been looking at Logitech's line of Harmony remotes for a few months now, trying to really justify the rather large price tag they carry. This weekend, I finally broke down.
I decided to go with a 659, which is one of the lower range Harmony remotes (from what I could tell). The other remotes had additional features that I found of little importance. While they do have certain nerdier bragging rights, I just could not justify the significantly higher price tag the other remotes have. Paying over $100 for a remote is already a stretch for me. In any case, on with the review.
Before I starts, I'd like to bitch a little about the packaging. The remote comes in a box/plastic combo (so you can see the actual remote). What sucked is the plastic part was that sealed plastic crap that has to be hacked up with various sharp implements in order to obtain toy surprise. This made VERY little sense since the plastic was in a box, but I digress (I just hate that plastic crap so very very much). After struggling to free the remote I plunked in the batteries (of which there are 4...I'll have more on batter life when I actually have to replace them) and it started right up. Of course, this remote is useless until you go online to setup all your devices.
Step one is to install the driver software, which wasn't anything spectacular. Like most device driver disks, everything loaded up just fine. It does install a toolbar client utility used to talk to the remote which sucks up about 15-20MB of RAM. This is a bit of a pain considering it really acts as a link between the remote and the admin website. Whatever happened to the good old days when a utility's memory was measured in kB?
Step two, I connect the remote. Windows identifies it properly and everything moved along nicely. At this point, I need to create a membership on Logitech's website for managing the remote. The plus side to this is Logitech can maintain the devices codes to support new stuff. The downside is if Logitech kills the remote line along with the website, I've no way to administer the remote. Quite frankly, I client app would be my preferred method.
Step three is basically making sure the remote's firmware and driver software are up to date. Of course, they are not, so I had to sit through a few more installations. This is really nothing new to me. I prefer to keep my devices up to speed, so I intended to do this anyways. It did tack on 15-20 minutes to the initial setup time though.
Once I was in it was all about telling the device all the stuff I've got. I entered in all my components (TV, Receiver, TiVo, DVD, PSTwo) and it configured a bunch of default settings for each. I had to train 5 or 6 buttons from my TV and Receiver, but it was really easy since the interface told me exactly what it needed.
Next, I configured my activities (Watch TV, Watch a Movie, etc). This process basically creates a macro behind the scenes that will do things like: change the TV to the appropriate input, change the receiver to the appropriate mode, and power on any necessary devices. The remote is smart and keeps track of what is on and what isn't.
If a command in the macro chain gets lost (like the TV didn't change to the proper input because a box of tissues was in the way of the IR beam), the problem can be solved by pressing the Help button. The remote will "ask" a few questions on the LCD screen in an attempt to resolve the issue. This is really helpful for less technical people.
In all, it took about an hour go through the initial setup and start using the remote. Everything worked perfectly but I was still missing a few bits of functionality (like change disc on my 5-disc DVD player). As I became more familiar with the web UI, I was able to get everything setup the way I wanted it. The admin gives complete control over every button on the remote.
It also has the soft buttons (the ones next to the LCD panel), which basically are like 4-6 additional buttons depending on remote's display settings. It is also possible to page through soft buttons, so in theory there could be hundreds crammed in there. I prefer to stick to 1 or 2 pages.
One feature I found particularly interesting is the media button. This button pulls dynamic media content whenever the remote is synchronized with the admin website. So far, all I've seen is it's ability to pull TV listings. I'm able to indicate who my provider is, which channels I actually watch, and which channels are my favorites. This gives me customized listings of what's on right now.
Of course, this feature is rather pointless for the TiVo, since it has an interactive guide built in. However, it is awesome for my TV. I use a CableCard on my TV, so I have no external cable box (so no fancy interactive guide). This means my TV can tune digital channels that the TiVo cannot. Having the TV listings on my remote is kind of cool (in a dork with a remote sort of way).
I believe this feature is also usable for large DVD changers (like the 400 disc behemoths). I get the impression I could define my DVD library so that it will show up on the remote. However, the big changers tend to have their own cataloging mechanism making this feature rather moot.
So after a few days of use the major pro so far is that after configuring everything I was able to tuck away my remotes into the dark recesses of my entertainment cabinet. Having complete control over every aspect of the remote allowed me to make sure I had all the features of a device I use on a regular basis close at hand (or thumb). This level of configurability on a classic remote would take about as long to configure as the devices would last anyways. I especially like hitting one button to do what used to take multiple buttons presses spanning multiple remotes.
The major downside is, the remote only works for one zone (a la living room only). Since it has a feature that tracks what devices are on and what mode they're in, it's hard (though probably not impossible) to configure the remote for multiple rooms. Seeing as how I'm only using 5 out of 15 devices it'll support, I think it would be nice to be able to configure it to work in multiple rooms. Then I could set which room I'm in and it would track the activities and devices in the room. It's better than buying 3 remotes for my 3 viewing areas (which I just won't do).