Logitech Harmony Remotes

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#439198 14-Feb-2011 11:59

885 utilises a tilt sensor, I would've thought the 785 would've had similar?

SepticSceptic

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#439199 14-Feb-2011 12:01

Lizard1977:
SepticSceptic: Having just set up the 785, I have one minor quibble:
The player control buttons (play / pause / FF/ Rewind) are a tad on the small side and are not back-lit. And laid out weird .... I did like the 525's layout over the 785's.

Well spotted. I would never have picked that up. Looking at the 700, I think it's button layout is better, plus it still has the coloured buttons necessary for Sky and Freeview.

SepticSceptic:And there is no Glow button on the 785 ... It's all these little things that you don't know about until you have actually used and compared them.

What's a glow button?

The 700's layout looks slightly better - the keys are laid out in a more functional way as compared to the 785's. But are all the keys backlit ? That's the thing when you are in a darkened room trying to figure out where the buttons are. Trying to figure out the pause button when you end up pressing the stop button .. Grr ...

The glow button on the 525 just bought up the backlight, as well as having the motion sensor. I think the motion sensor has improved somewhat, hence the dropping of the glow button.

I do like the shape of the 700 - almost like the Tivo "peanut". The Tivo peanut is a very comfortable ergonomic shape, and well balanced, and all functions are reachable by fingers and thumbs on one hand. Try the 700, and see if the Activities are selectable when holding the remote in one hand.

bazzer

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#439209 14-Feb-2011 12:16

Jaxson:
Lizard1977: What's a glow button?

A dedicated button to turn the back lighting on and off.

Doesn't picking it up make it glow?

SepticSceptic

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#439212 14-Feb-2011 12:20

bazzer:
Jaxson:
Lizard1977: What's a glow button?

A dedicated button to turn the back lighting on and off.

Doesn't picking it up make it glow?

The motion sensor was a bit dicky in the earlier models. Seems to be more consistent now.

Jaxson

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#439216 14-Feb-2011 12:36

SepticSceptic: The motion sensor was a bit dicky in the earlier models. Seems to be more consistent now.

Thanks, suggests it's not really a loss then. All good.

numfarr

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#439264 14-Feb-2011 14:07

SepticSceptic: The 700's layout looks slightly better - the keys are laid out in a more functional way as compared to the 785's. But are all the keys backlit ?

All the keys are backlit, activated by tilt sensor, except the dedicated activity buttons at the very top for some reason.

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SepticSceptic

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#439274 14-Feb-2011 14:20

numfarr:
SepticSceptic: The 700's layout looks slightly better - the keys are laid out in a more functional way as compared to the 785's. But are all the keys backlit ?

All the keys are backlit, activated by tilt sensor, except the dedicated activity buttons at the very top for some reason.

Bizarro !! Dedicated Activity buttons that are not back lit ? What on earth are they thinking ? Watch a DVD and accidentally flick to Sky ? OOps, DVD turns off, and you lose where you are at on the DVD ...

The pcis on the Harmony Home page aren't that clear - wasn't aware they were dedicated activity buttons. Nah, I prefer the nice LCD display with the little graphical icons. And 6 devices wasn't quite enough. I have 7, the 7th being the VCR ... oops, no, I have 8 - the projector.

Then there is the facility like controlling the aircon ( quiet mode for movie watching), automatic drape closure, light dimming, etc. Not that I have those, but these are points to consider.

numfarr

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#439316 14-Feb-2011 16:13

SepticSceptic: Bizarro !! Dedicated Activity buttons that are not back lit ? What on earth are they thinking ? Watch a DVD and accidentally flick to Sky ? OOps, DVD turns off, and you lose where you are at on the DVD ...

They're right up the top of the remote so pretty hard to hit by accident. If it's dark you can still select activities from the LCD display, but it only shows two at a time so you have to page through them.

richms

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#439318 14-Feb-2011 16:16

That reminds me of my stupid panasonic cordless phone which only backlit the buttons which you can locate in the dark easily, like the numbers and left all the others like answer and hangup and redial etc which vary between different phones in location dark. Have to wonder what the hell they were smoking when they made that decision.

IMO, backlight should be an all or nothing type thing. To only light some keys is just really dumb.

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Lizard1977

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#442956 24-Feb-2011 09:30

I ordered the Harmony 700 from Computer Lounge on Monday, and it arrived yesterday, so had a play around with it last night. I have to say I'm underwhelmed by my first encounter. Logitech's website was pretty slow, and crashed while I was adding devices. I've only got three devices to add, and it refused to accept that there was such a TV as the Panasonic TH-P50V20Z, even though it recognised similar models (like the VT20Z) and the P54V20Z. I decided that there might be some unusual commands from a remote for the 3D model, so went with the P54V20Z rather than teach the remote.

I setup the basic activities, but there were a lot of buttons that weren't mapped, and instead were only available on the screen. For example, the coloured buttons weren't mapped, and I had to add these manually. The Harmony didn't map the directional controls of the Pioneer receiver remote, so I had to teach it those commands. It also had a huge number of screens for the myriad buttons from the original remote, but there wasn't any real logic to the arrangement. Ipod controls like up, down, enter, were listed, but the small screen meant that the names of these commands were abbreviated and not really useful. Also, up and down commands were separated by about 4 screens.

For the Listen to Music activity, I set it to play the ipod on the receiver, with the TV on. However, when I chose that activity, it would start out right, and then at the last second, change the input on the receiver to Blu Ray. I could correct it using the Help function, but it didn't remember for the next time, and checking the settings on the software didn't show anything wrong.

After about 90 mins of playing around and experimenting I was about to give up in exasperation, but I remembered your tales of people who had returned their Harmony's because they "didn't work", and decided to perservere. In the end, I started to get a better handle for the way it operates (devices vs activities) but nothing in the enclosed literature or the website really explains this adequately. I've left it for now, and will sit down with the original remotes and draw up a plan of which buttons to map and where, and then construct custom screens of other buttons for each of the activities.

But I have to say I'm a little disappointed with it. I imagined it would be more intuitive and have a better keymap that more closely aligned to the original remote. I'm also stunned that with 5000 brands and 225,000 devices, it didn't know about a fairly common and popular TV such as mine. It's obvious that other TVs in the same range are there, but it wouldn't recognise my model number. But I will try again tonight and hopefully get it working properly...

timmmay

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#442961 24-Feb-2011 09:50

Lizard, you should be using the software you install on the PC, not the website.

Overall they're a good universal remote, but they have their quirks.

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#442968 24-Feb-2011 10:13

I wouldn't worry about the TH-P50V20 vs TH-P54V20 comparison as they share the same remotes / controls.
However, I also share your frustration re: Logitech. Heck any universal remote still annoys me compared to a decent dedicated remote control.

SepticSceptic

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#442981 24-Feb-2011 10:47

Persevere !! It took me 3 crash and burns before I wrangled the Harmony into submission.

1st time it was using all the default settings from the Harmony site
2nd time around, fiddling around with all the settings, moving icons, making up macros, changing the order of things.
3rd time around - learning from the previous 2 attempts, and knowing what I wanted within the limitations of the harmony remote offerings, I think I have it down just the way I want it ,..

I did use the latest Harmony software, and even on dial-up, worked reasonably well.

Jaxson

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#443016 24-Feb-2011 12:05

SepticSceptic:
1st time it was using all the default settings from the Harmony site
2nd time around, fiddling around with all the settings, moving icons, making up macros, changing the order of things.
3rd time around - learning from the previous 2 attempts, and knowing what I wanted within the limitations of the harmony remote offerings

+1

Well put in #3. Honestly half the battle is working out how to make the system achieve what you'd like and more imporntantly for a lot of tech users, finding our how logitech/harmony do it instead of how their last brand did.

Most of what you want is in there. You have fairly standard (not meant in a derogatory way either I must say) well supported gear. It's just a bunch of time now to set it all up the way you want it.

Improvement suggestions list:
Allow copy and past of activities.
(That way you can move your work that took hours to setup to a very similar activity without having to start from scratch each time. ie Watch TV, and Watch TV with stereo on.

Offer a direct quick link to an advanced page that takes you direct to the custom stuff that advanced users will want.
(Seriously you have to do a fair bit to get to some of the advanced option pages, and yeah I don't know how a lot of buyers get theirs going past the initial paint by numbers/crayon help part).

Label stuff better, both in the software and with regards to the remote.
(ie the remote has a button with a label Channel but in the software that button is referred to as Program etc, just a basic error between their multiple models that makes it quite difficult to use)

Jaxson

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#443017 24-Feb-2011 12:07

Oh, and specifically to you Lizard1977, spend some time drawing up a map of your devices, and how they connect to the receiver and what input they are connected into. I found this helped heaps to sort my on out.

I don't have the internet at home, so any adjustments I make at someone elses house etc need to work as best as I can first time, as I cant test it right there and then.

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