Remote Conundrum

Tuesday September 14, 2004 at 6:14 pm | Filed under Gadgetry

We had one of those cool remote control that controlled everything. It was a Harmony Remote, and it was pretty nice.

I say “had” because the other day, one of the cats killed our remote control. Or at least that’s who we’re blaming it on.

We must have left a cup of water on the coffee table during the day, because that night I was using the remote and water came out it! What the? That’s not supposed to happen, I don’t care what remote you have. The thing actually kept working for a bit, but then started to lose it. So I took the batteries out and let it sit for a day. Meanwhile I got out the 6 or 7 remotes it replaced to get by until it mended or a replacement was found. Unfortunately, it looks like she’s a goner.

So I’ve picked up the research I did 6 short months ago that landed us that Harmony remote (SST-659) and have found a few things that I thought I’d pass along to those that are searching for the kick-butt-be-all-end-all remote that’s family friendly, DVR conscious, and not a big brick of an ugly thing that you can’t pick up with one hand.

One of the huge upsides to the Harmony remotes are macros called Activities. They know what component is on and can turn others on or off according to the setting in each activity. So if I’m in the Watch TV activity and want to listen to the radio, I can hit the “listen to radio” activity button and the TV will turn off and the receiver will flip to the Radio input. all by hitting one button. Or let’s say I’m watching TV (the Watch TV Activity is active) and I want to watch a DVD that I just go from Netflix. I push the “Watch a Movie” button and the TV switches inputs, the Receiver switches inputs, the DVD player comes on, and the lights dim (okay I don’t have that last part down yet, but I have it to where I can use my remote to dim the lights, so that’s cool). So of course, I love how Harmony handles macros, in the form of Activities based on what you’re doing. This makes it easy for a house guest (or, say *cough* your wife) to watch some TV without having to take a course in electronics. You configure this baby via Harmony’s web site, where you can tell it what kinda stuff you have and then download your config to the remote via a USB cable. you can go crazy with the custom settings, but it pretty simple to get things working at least right off the bat.

So as I’m searching for replacements and how much it’s gonna put me back, I run into some great news that Harmony is coming out with two new remotes! These address the few nit-picking problems that I had with the 659 that I had before. I have to wait as they are just now getting to distributors, but I’m excited to have this upgrade opportunity thrown at me. now if I can only fin some way to get a crazy discount off of one of these.

In the meantime, I went ahead and bought a Universal MX-500 remote because Universal Remote is a highly recommended brand and I wanted to know if I am barking up the wrong tree. I’ve only had this remote one night, and while the build quality is great and the buttons are awesome, the programming is not near the Harmony’s method. Not nearly as flexible, and of course, no activity-based macros. It’ll do until I get the next Harmony, which will probably be the 676 model.

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No Responses to “Remote Conundrum”

  1. Arlen Says:
    September 14th, 2004 at 8:10 pm

    That’s it–no more water for the cats! Either that or keep the remote in a ziplock bag.