Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2006 > July > 07 > Entry
Harmonic remote-gence
The entry I wrote about the Harmony 880 remote turned out to be a bit of a surprise for my dad — I was shopping for it as a birthday/Father’s Day gift for him.
A few minutes after he’d opened his gift, we were already charging the remote and getting online to update the 880 and get all the components of my folks’ home theater into the device. Before I’d blinked, he’d already written down the model numbers for all the pieces, from the DVD player and recorder to the TV, receiver and VCR. I dutifully entered them in and, except for a few tweaks, we got the remote most of the way running. Because of the weird way his HDTV handles device inputs, we weren’t able to get the 880 to switch the TV to the right device automatically with one button press, but there was a way to do it manually.
A few days later and after a call to tech support (and a software update), the remote was perfectly programmed, resolving the input issue on the TV and configuring everything correctly, even my brother’s Xbox360.
So, it sounds like the Harmony 880 is a winner (I got a testimonial from Debbie Hiott in the newsroom, too: She and her husband use pics of their dogs and cats as screensavers on theirs). But it seems like it’s meant for people who have the patience to program it correctly (the setup can be a bit confusing even for technophiles), people who are willing to make a call to Logitech’s tech support when trouble arises, and folks who have access to the model numbers of their devices. My dad has all his tech manuals well organized, but I have a feeling that if I got the remote, I’d be digging behind components for the correct numbers.
The Harmony 880 is said to be a remote that makes things easier than having several remotes around, but the tech curve on programming the thing is high, possibly higher than casual home theater enthusiasts might be willing to deal with. If you have a tech-savvy person in the house, the $150 price tag could make it a good purchase. Otherwise, you might be better off sticking with whatever near-universal remote you already have in hand.
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