Logitech Harmony One Universal Remote with Color Touchscreen
by Logitech
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List Price: Our Price: $159.99 You Save: $40.00 (20%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Logitech Harmony One Universal Remote with Color Touchscreen
Customer Review: Really? That's all it can do? I am so embarrassed..
Summary: 2 Stars
Yes , before I bought it, I read the enthusiastic CNET review. Enthusiastic? Euphoric! And completely unbiased, I am sure.
So I was excited when I received my 200$ item - the 'last remote I'd ever need'!
It worked right out of the box and looked pretty sharp on the coffee table. And 6 weeks later, it still does. Looking sharp, I mean.
But, like other reviewers wrote before me, instead of replacing my 5 remotes, I now have 6 remotes. But one of them looks really sharp :-)
Yes, setup connected to a PC seems easy, intuitive, fast. But it works unreliable, sometimes it switches all programmed devices on, sometimes it misses one or two, and then you have to switch off all others and try again, or go through a multi-step 'help' routine which will eventually switch on the missibg devices. By then, of course, you are embarrassed and friends and family suggest impatiently, to go and get the 'real' remotes out of the drawer so you can finally watch the movie..
You'll find yourself spending much time programming and reprogramming the remote, communicating with Logitech customer support only to get a link to the same passage in the not very helpful manual you read again and again to no avail..
And I should struggle less than other victims of clever marketing strategies, being a computer support and programming professional. But no..
To list all the technical shortcomings would take some time. An example? The remote does not really transmit 'on' or 'off' codes. I sends 'toggle on/off' commands. The difference? Let's say, the TV was already on and you press the button 'watch dvd' to also switch on your blu-ray player and the surround sound receiver. The remote will switch both devices on (if you are lucky, that is), and it switches the TV off. Ok, you think, i'll try it again. Press the 'off' button on the remote and start over. Now it switches the dvd player and receiver off, and the TV on. SO you can either go through a comples series of steps on the remote to only switch the TV off, or you find yourself walking to your TV and switching it off manually. I am serious! The last remote you ever need? Uh..
Say you watch TV (TV and cable box on) and your kids come into the room and you'd like to start a dvd for them? No problem! Of course you cannot (!) press the button 'watch dvd' on the Harmony One. Because then it switches the dvd player and the receiver on, as programmed, but it turns the cable box and the TV off. You are doomed. Can't press the 'off' switch to try it again, because then it turns off the dvd player and receiver, but now it turns TV and cable box on again. Arrrgh..
You get the idea? Yes?
I could go on, and tell you some more, e.g. about simple macros not being programmable because you only have a few limited steps, the system will allow you to save, just not enough steps to do what you need to do.
Thanks 'Logitech customer service', for letting us know 'the device is working as intended'. That helps. Really. I'd better go and buy my girlfriend a new pair of shoes to justify the money I threw out for a 'useless gadget'..
We found that the Harmony One works in approximately 50% of attempts without problem. So every second time, roughly, (maybe it's 60%-40%, does that make it better for you?), it does not switch on one device you need and then it takes multiple steps to correct that, or it switches on a device you did not ask for. Amazing!
Frankly, I frequently find myself walking to the entertainment center to switch something on or off by hand, because the Harmony remote gets 'confused'. Oddly, that didn't happen before, with my 5 remotes on the coffee table. The last remote I ever need? Nooooooooo..
Oh well, we got all our remotes out of the drawer again, and I wasted an hour writing this up for you. But if I can make even one person think twice before he or she spends their hard earned money and only get a lot frustration in return, it's well worth it :-)
Customer Review: Great, but be prepared to re-program it 4 or 5 time to get every combination of components working together just a syou want.
Summary: 4 Stars
I primarily bought this product because in my home office I have 3 HDTVs, a DirecTV HDTV Digital Recorder (PVR), a home theater system and 2 computers running Windows 7 Media Center. I also have a 3rd 22" HDTV that I use for a 1080p monitor on my workstation. My company is in the HDTV media streaming business so the environment is extremely complicated with many devices wired together, sometime in several ways. We need all of this to test web page development for Silverlight and Flash platform Internet TV streaming. We had so many remote controls that it had begun to become a major effort to do testing. Finding a particular remote, in and of itself, was difficult enough but making the picture from device A go into TV B's HDMI port 2 while sindeing the S/PIDF sound to a Dolby Audio Receiver, sometime with satellite as the source, sometime with DVD, or CD as the source and sometime the source might be from a 3 TB library of video and music we maintain. It aslo might be originating from a Web Page on our colocated web development server. I took on the challenge to see if it was possible to customize a single remote control to connect anything to anything and play any audio or video through an single or multiple source.
The remote is programmed with software on your workstation that connects to a Logitech database over the Internet to find out the capabilities of each device you own. (You need to inventory model numbers of all your hardware prior to programming the remote. Also it heps to know all the input and output ports in use on all the devices. My first attempt was so so, I went back and made a few modification and got it close. But still not just right. I decided to have the remote control wiped and then I map out using MS Visio ever cable to every device and port. With this information I was able on the 3rd attemp to get it perfect. If was extremely time consuming. Probably took a total of 30 hours of work but the end result was fantastic.
This is not a product for the non-technical types. One of the biggest short coming was that it did not have a major category of Media Center Software but instead wanted to know what brand and model of computer the media center was running on. It never even ask the OS. We use Windows Media Center and it is exactly the same on any Windows based computer. There is only one remote control device to control it and its licensed to several manufactures by Microsoft. So any Window Media Center remote control will control any Windows Media Center exactly the same.
One other short coming was the lack of Home Theater System Hardware as a category. Instead you had to treat it as an "old fashion" component stereo system so you had to train it with the original HTS remote control do things such as change the sound from Dolby 5.1 to Matrix, cinema or to stereo for music listening. But with a little planning and little foresight this device can be set up so that you group devices and media sources into what they call an activity. Like "Look at a DVD", "Play a Game", "Watch Internet TV", "Watch Live Direct TV, or "Watch a Recorded TV Show" or "Look an MP4 Movies in the Media Center with the sound set to Dolby Surround playing through the Home Theater System". This concept was an original one from any other universal remote I had worked with.
This device is time consuming to learn and setup, but well worth the $90 price tag. BTW, once programed all your activity are chosen on a small touch video screen at the top of the remote. If you spend enough time thinking about how each device works and how you select items on that device you probably would never need to even use the keyboard below except to maybe change channels on a TV that wasn't being controled by a Media Center or to scroll around a menu using direction arrow keys. I give this remote a B-. It extremly functional, capable of configuring several devices at once to create an activity and the price is perfect.
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Customer Review: Could it be the perfect remote?
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought a new TV (60 in LCD-LED), and I needed a remote that could control the 9 equipments of my audio-video system, including cable box, BD, DVD, Zone 2-8 DVD, DVD recorder, I-Pod dock, AV receiver, and even an old VCR (remember those?). Having owned 2 Harmony's before (659, and 610), I did look into other makes but quickly settled back to the brand thanks to its web-based programming and huge equipment database.
I went to the Harmony One as it was the cheapest able to control all my equipment. Amazon had a great price ($70 lower than local Best Buy). Programming was as easy as any of the other Harmony's I owned before. Once programmed, I was immediately blown away by the new, easy to hold, almost sensuous shape and weighting, the new thoughtful convenience touches, the beautifully re-laid out button scheme and the limit-less customization ability. The only negative I found so far is that the piano-black finish attracts fingerprints like a magnet, and I haven't found the way to customized buttons icons yet.
Qualities:
- Programming is as simple as creating an account, selecting the equipment (I had to identify the remote I had for the DVD recorder), and defining all the activities needed with the equipment and how to set up the AV Receiver and TV inputs. Then, go back and review the custom buttons, I simplified the default set up to only the buttons I actually used, to avoid having to page through a lot of rarely used button pages. And, as per my past experience, even if the remote looses power and memory (as happens when it we move, and the stuff stays a week in a moving truck), you can just go to the web, and re-load it, and voilà, just as new.
- Of course, it's a Harmony, so once you pick an activity (like Watch TV, Watch DVD, Watch BD and so on), it turns on the related equipment, sets all the inputs correctly, and sets all the buttons and the touch screen to command the equipment required for your activity, including subtleties like: the navigation go to the DVD, the volume to the AV receiver, image adjustments to the TV etc...
- Button layout is great, clear division into 5 sections, numbers, DVD/VCR/DVR navigation, Volume/Channel/cursor with mute button, Menu/Guide/Exit/Info/page up/doan, and the touch screen. The button are all sculpted to make it easy to recognize the section, and the shapes in each section are all touch-recognizeable. There even dots on the skip forward/reverse to distinguish them from the forward/reverse, and a concave spot on number 5 to easily orient your fingers on the numeric keypad.
- Convenience touches: incredible. All buttons and the touchpad are backlit, and it turns on as soon as you lift the remote (acceleration detection). The Activities button is right above the Menu button, no need to reach all the way up top the remove as the old Harmony's. And the touchscreen deserves a separate bullet.
- The glorious color touchscreen, can show 3 activities or 6 custom buttons, with scroll arrows left and right for paging. The number of pages seem limitless, but I limit myself to 3 pages per activity. The glorious touch (pun intended) is the two soft buttons at bottom of the touch screen, one brings up the Devices screen for accessing the full buttons of the devices, and the other brings up favorite channels. As soon as you touch the Devices, the color scheme changes, and the other soft button changes to "Current Activity" to allow you to go back. Same when you go to Favorites, you can program your favorite channels with color icons downloaded from the Net, and the other soft button allows you to go back to the main activity screen. The convenience grows on you very quickly.
- Beautifully made, shape and texture feels wonderful in your hand, perfectly weighted.
- And the charging craddle makes a "home position" - no more hunting around the couch, shelves, etc...
As I said, could it be the perfect remote?
Customer Review: Cannot program devices correctly; very poor software
Summary: 1 Stars
I had high expectations from this device, based on the generally positive reviews on this site. Boy, was I let down.
My setup was quite simple:
- JVC TV
- Toshiba DVD player
- Panasonic DVD harddisk recorder
- Logitech Squeezebox digital music server
Setting up the Harmony One to control other consumer devices is a two-step process. First the Harmony One is initialized with the devices that it is intended to control, such as TV, or DVD harddisk recorder. Then activities are defined to actually use these devices, such as record a movie on the DVD harddisk recorder, or play a DVD on the DVD player. All this is done using the supplied RC software.
Setting up the TV and the DVD player was straight forward: the devices switched on and off as expected. Although on the second try, the TV would not switch to the correct external input when the player was selected.
My problem started when I tried to set up the DVD recorder and the Squezebox. First, the recorder. The model I have was not in the database, even though it is a respectable brand and last year was a best-selling model ( Panasonic DMR-EH59). The installation software offers a choice of PVR or DVD recorder. Not being certain what the difference is, I choose DVD recorder. After connecting the Harmony One to the PC and with the recorder's original RC facing it, the RC software then proposed to learn how to control the recorder, by prompting me to push several of the original RC's buttons. This all proceeded smoothly, except that when I tried to set up an activity to drive the device, it refused, saying that the recorder cannot use video cassettes! So I deinstalled the recorder device and tried again. This time, at the end of the learning process, it concluded that the installation was too difficult, and that I should phone customer support.
The next problem concerned the Squeezebox. This device is actually made by Logitech, but after setting it up, the Harmony One was not able to drive it. Hmmm, the Harmony One is incompatible with one of its manufacturer's other products.
Finally the RC software which is installed on the PC to allow the device to be initialised. The software is nicely designed, except that it is plagued with connection problems with the Logitech server. About one interaction in three fails to respond, and after a minute of so the message appears "Connection interrupted - Document contains no data". Pressing the Next button and after another delay, the interaction proceeds. This make the software completely unusable, and is reason enough in my opinion not to buy the device, as it completely ruins the user exerience.
Using the device. Concerning using the RC, in as much I was able to use it to control the TV and the DVD player.
TV: The Harmony was able to select channels, adjust volume, teletext, etc, as would be expected. However, when I tried to adjust the screen's aspect ratio (auto, panoramic, 16:9, etc) it was not able to return back to the original screen - the OK button did not work. Also, there are no physical red, green, yellow and blue buttons.
DVD player: This worked perfectly.
Other impressions: The RC has too many buttons. This no Apple iPad/iPod. For example, why is it necessary to have four sets of up/down buttons ( at the top beside Menu/Info, above and below the OK button, and then two more sets for the channel selection and volume)?
I contacted customer support and we managed somehow to set up an activity to record to the DVD recorder's harddisk. The activity icons displayed on the screen to support this activity are useless, for example, no Program Guide or ShowView icon is displayed.
In summary, rubbish and it's going back to the shop. I'm a software engineer, and am used to this type of configuration, and normally find it a breeze. This is one of the worst consumer products I've seen.
Customer Review: Best remote I have ever owned!
Summary: 4 Stars
First of all, let me say that this remote is awesome, despite the fact that I only gave it four stars. I received this remote as a gift to replace the five remotes that I needed to run all my new A/V equipment. Although I was able to get by for the most part with only one of my previous remotes, I always found myself digging one of the others out of the drawer to do something specific. My wife was going crazy, (she actually bought the remote for me).
Relatively speaking, setup was pretty simple. I got all the information for each of my components, installed the software, and went through the guided remote setup. I only had issues with two components, my Blu-Ray player and my HTPC. I was surprised that the software did not distinguish between a Blu-Ray and a standard DVD player. Also, I was surprised that my Panasonic BD-60 was not listed. I had to go through the process of learning the remote using a few key presses, which initially caused some confusion. I was holding the buttons down, but I only needed to press and release the button for it to register. The software only needed about a handful of key presses to figure out which remote I had.
I expected to have more trouble with the HTPC. I set it up as a generic computer, and went through the same process of learning my media center remote. Since I had already done the same thing with the Blu-Ray remote, the process went much quicker this time.
Fine tuning the remote has taken me much longer, since I have had to use it to figure out which changes would be most beneficial. A laptop would be very useful for setting up the remote, so that you can sit down, make a change, test, and then adjust if necessary. Updating the remote settings can take a while, so making as many changes as possible can reduce the time it will take to get the remote running like it should.
What do I like most about the remote? I truly does everything! Every button and soft key can be programmed to do almost anything for any configured device or activity. Activities really help combine functions from the different devices together. My wife really likes that she can push one button and it will turn on all the components necessary to watch TV, movies, etc. If a problem comes up, press help and the remote will ask questions to get the right components working. If I need to do something that is not included in the activity, I can quickly change to the device, do what I need, and press current activity to change back.
What do I not like about this remote? Just know that these are all minor issues and do not detract from my overall impression of the remote. 1. The surface of the remote looks great, but picks up prints and smudges easily. Logitech should have made a way to disable the buttons for cleaning. 2. The remote is long, so I had some trouble performing some functions that required certain keys to be pressed for confirmation. I had to keep readjusting the remote to do things like erase a show from the DVR. This could be fixed by adding a couple of convenience keys on the main part of the remote. 3. The software is actually a client that connects to the Web. Which means that you need an account to setup and adjust the remote. I don't know why they could not make a stand-alone piece of software to do this. 4. It can take a while to run through all the steps of an activity, so it is important to make sure the remote is pointed at the components during the process and that nothing is in the way. This is more of an issue with the remote using IR than with the remote itself. Again, these issues are minor, but are the reason I did not give the remote five stars.
Bottom line is that this is what I would consider a premium universal remote. It is expensive, but is worth every penny for those individuals that are looking for a way to put all the other remotes away for good.