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GM Hockey » Alphabet soup + Anouncements! » Random Thoughts - NON Hockey talk » What Am I Watching Right now? MAJOR BREAKING BAD SPOILERS IN HERE!

What Am I Watching Right now? MAJOR BREAKING BAD SPOILERS IN HERE!

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wprager


Administrator
Administrator

tim1_2 wrote:Did you have problems with your Harmony? I love mine.

I've had two. The first (a 520 model, I think, or something in the 5xx) I felt was poorly built -- it was one of those models with a thin front-end, and every time I had to press one of the buttons at the thin end the whole thing creaked. The glow button stopped working after about a year. Some other buttons wore out. It pretty much died after about 3 years. Then I bought an 880 model at a fantastic Boxing Week sale price from Dell.ca (check them out -- very good sale prices and fast, free shipping on everything). It was a great little remote, but the kids weren't kind to it. It lasted maybe 4 years. There were things about it I wasn't crazy about -- could use a backlight for the buttons, and the buttons themselves were very crowded, I felt.

Anyhow, I feel the Harmony remotes are very overpriced for what they bring, especially since they got bought out by Logitech. And they really have not advanced in terms of innovation and ease of use. If you check around, about 6-8 years ago it was hard to find anyone *not* saying they were the best, but that sentiment has slowly drifted.

Vandelay


Sophomore
Sophomore

interesting app...I wonder if it works for xbmc. I'm using remoteX but it doesn't work for tv. Does it only work for devices connected to wifi? If remoteX could control my dish, it'd be perfect...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u2_JISQbjc

shabbs


Hall of Famer
Hall of Famer

The new Harmony Ultimate looks nice...

http://www.logitech.com/en-ca/product/harmony-ultimate?crid=60

Love my Harmony One.



wprager

wprager
Administrator
Administrator

Vandelay wrote:interesting app...I wonder if it works for xbmc. I'm using remoteX but it doesn't work for tv. Does it only work for devices connected to wifi? If remoteX could control my dish, it'd be perfect...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u2_JISQbjc

$49 is a bit pricey for an app. But they sell the remote as well and right now you can get it for $149 at one of the resellers. If I see it slip to $100 (Boxing Day or some-such) then I'll find it hard to resist. As it stands, the $169 price is a bit steep for a product with so few reiviews.


_________________
Hey, I don't have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I've failed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my wife. I love my life. And I wish you my kind of success.
- Dicky Fox

wprager

wprager
Administrator
Administrator

shabbs wrote:The new Harmony Ultimate looks nice...

http://www.logitech.com/en-ca/product/harmony-ultimate?crid=60

Love my Harmony One.

At that price, it'd better love you back. Long time.


_________________
Hey, I don't have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I've failed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my wife. I love my life. And I wish you my kind of success.
- Dicky Fox

tim1_2

tim1_2
Franchise Player
Franchise Player

I have the Logitech Harmony One, and it is great. Comes with a cradle and a rechargeable battery too. I've been using it for a couple years, and have zero complaints. Everything still works great, despite being dropped countless times.

If your remote doesn't have a touchscreen, you're just living in the past.

What Am I Watching Right now? MAJOR BREAKING BAD SPOILERS IN HERE! - Page 28 Logitech+Harmony+One+remote+control



Looks like they don't make the Harmony One anymore, but you can still get 'em through eBay.

shabbs

shabbs
Hall of Famer
Hall of Famer

wprager wrote:
shabbs wrote:The new Harmony Ultimate looks nice...

http://www.logitech.com/en-ca/product/harmony-ultimate?crid=60

Love my Harmony One.

At that price, it'd better love you back. Long time.
That one offers access to devices behind close doors... which is nice. Will have to read up on that and how it works. Those types of solutions usually involve an IR receiver that redirects a signal inside a cabinet, but I think this one relies on Bluetooth, which only a few of my devices support right now.

wprager

wprager
Administrator
Administrator

Maybe it involves an IR repeater that also receives bluetooth. They would be best to market something that will address an installed base -- no-one is going to upgrade $1000s worth of A/V equipment to accommodate a $300 remote.


_________________
Hey, I don't have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I've failed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my wife. I love my life. And I wish you my kind of success.
- Dicky Fox

wprager

wprager
Administrator
Administrator

tim1_2 wrote:I have the Logitech Harmony One, and it is great. Comes with a cradle and a rechargeable battery too. I've been using it for a couple years, and have zero complaints. Everything still works great, despite being dropped countless times.

If your remote doesn't have a touchscreen, you're just living in the past.

What Am I Watching Right now? MAJOR BREAKING BAD SPOILERS IN HERE! - Page 28 Logitech+Harmony+One+remote+control


The 880 didn't have a touch screen, but it had a color screen, charging cradle, customizable buttons (8 of them, I think). I don't know if a touch screen *that* small is all that useful, actually. I've got enough problems with my BB Bold 990 and I believe the Harmony One's is smaller.


Looks like they don't make the Harmony One anymore, but you can still get 'em through eBay.


_________________
Hey, I don't have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I've failed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my wife. I love my life. And I wish you my kind of success.
- Dicky Fox

tim1_2

tim1_2
Franchise Player
Franchise Player

I find the touchscreen very useful. You use it to turn stuff on (Starting "Activities"), and then you can also use it to access any special buttons you may need on a piece of AV stuff that you didn't otherwise map to an existing button on the remote.

To each their own...I love it, but I haven't really used anything else, except previous iterations of the Harmony.

shabbs

shabbs
Hall of Famer
Hall of Famer

I have not seen anything that can handle the number of devices/activities that the Harmony remotes can, and can be used by anyone that picks it up at my house, such as non-techy grandparents watching your kid when you go out on date night.

Harmony One FTW!

wprager

wprager
Administrator
Administrator

shabbs wrote:I have not seen anything that can handle the number of devices/activities that the Harmony remotes can, and can be used by anyone that picks it up at my house, such as non-techy grandparents watching your kid when you go out on date night.

Harmony One FTW!

Sorry, can't agree 100% there.

I had some issues where their db did not have the discreet signals for a particular device to turn on/off (i.e. only a power toggle), which lead to a lot of issues when it got out of synch (remote thought the TV was already on, so didn't bother sending the On signal). Similar issue with inputs (but even worse -- to get from input 2 to input 1 you had to first go to 3 and 4 -- only had 4 inputs -- but that meant you had to hold the remote pointed at the TV for a few seconds).

The WAF was not very high in this family because of those issues. Pretty much all my devices had discreet on/off codes but for some reason the unit insisted on using the power toggle instead, and too often got it wrong.

They may have fixed this. Not sure. But I have to tell you, the little remote that came with my LG sound bar has a few buttons on the bottom that work with the TV. It has a power button, channel/volume up/down (which I don't use because it's cable and digital audio), mute (another one I don't use) and input. About the only thing I'm missing is a center OK button to let me select the input quicker (right now I click until I get the right one, then have to wait a couple of seconds for it to time out and select that input). That little remote is my favorite one now because it's so simple. But it doesn't light up and I can't put a Sens logo on it as a background -- so I must look for one with a color screen Smile


_________________
Hey, I don't have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I've failed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my wife. I love my life. And I wish you my kind of success.
- Dicky Fox

shabbs

shabbs
Hall of Famer
Hall of Famer

You can program new functions and have it learn them. Not sure if you explored that. That input issue sounds like an issue with the device in general. Does the remote for the device allow you to jump to inputs directly? If so, you should be able to program that too.

Because it is IR and sequence driven, you can run into issues if the devices don't all come on properly. I usually tweak the timings for each device and sequence so that I don't have to hold the remote pointing to my devices for too long. The defaults seem to be to long.

You should use this:

What Am I Watching Right now? MAJOR BREAKING BAD SPOILERS IN HERE! - Page 28 Mad-Men-Remote_l

tim1_2

tim1_2
Franchise Player
Franchise Player

Prags, the Harmony One has a "Help" button that goes through your devices one by one and asks you which ones are on or off, and fixes them individually. So the issue you bring up with stuff being "out of sync" has been addressed.

So you are using one remote to control all your AV stuff, Prags?

wprager

wprager
Administrator
Administrator

shabbs wrote:You can program new functions and have it learn them. Not sure if you explored that. That input issue sounds like an issue with the device in general. Does the remote for the device allow you to jump to inputs directly? If so, you should be able to program that too.

Because it is IR and sequence driven, you can run into issues if the devices don't all come on properly. I usually tweak the timings for each device and sequence so that I don't have to hold the remote pointing to my devices for too long. The defaults seem to be to long.

You should use this:

What Am I Watching Right now? MAJOR BREAKING BAD SPOILERS IN HERE! - Page 28 Mad-Men-Remote_l


I did explore it. I googled, I looked at message boards. Maybe things have changed, but back then the remote *insisted* on using the power toggle code if one was available (which it was pretty much all the time). That's why they have the help button. The signal duration and inter-signal pauses were certainly things to play with, but it was very cumbersome and not customizable in that you could only change *all* inter-signal pauses and not after a specific signal.

I'm old enough to have seen a wired remote which had two buttons on it -- channel up, and channel down. It was connected to a mechanical motor that hung on the back of the TV where the axle of the channel tuning knob extended all the way to the back of the cabinet. You still had to get off your a$$ to turn it on/off. And the thing was very noisy and quite slow.

You tell that to the kids today and they won't believe you.

What Am I Watching Right now? MAJOR BREAKING BAD SPOILERS IN HERE! - Page 28 Four-yorkshiremen


_________________
Hey, I don't have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I've failed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my wife. I love my life. And I wish you my kind of success.
- Dicky Fox

wprager

wprager
Administrator
Administrator

tim1_2 wrote:Prags, the Harmony One has a "Help" button that goes through your devices one by one and asks you which ones are on or off, and fixes them individually. So the issue you bring up with stuff being "out of sync" has been addressed.

So you are using one remote to control all your AV stuff, Prags?

Yeah, I know about the help button. The point is the remote should have a preference to using discreet signals (a different one for on and off, as opposed to a single one that is a power toggle). For some reason it didn't. Maybe they changed that now.

My AV setup is very simple. I have a TV, a cable box, a PS3 and a sound bar. The soundbar is connected to the TV's digital audio out. The TV's volume is turned down to zero (doesn't affect digital audio out).

One remote does it. Until of course I want to watch a movie -- has the PS3 *finally* come out with a remote that has backlighting? I used about 5-6 buttons on that stupid thing and it has 50, so they are pretty crowded. Hard to hit the right ones in the dark.


_________________
Hey, I don't have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I've failed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my wife. I love my life. And I wish you my kind of success.
- Dicky Fox

wprager

wprager
Administrator
Administrator

Didn't realize that Logitech is putting the Harmony division up for sale. Last quarter was disappointing:
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=159335

From that thread:
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showpost.php?p=1478316&postcount=4

I've found that Harmony remotes are/were a very leaky abstraction.

Because a lot of settings on AV receivers are "toggle" functions and a some are "cycle" functions. For example I have a Yamaha AV receiver that doesn't have a button-per-surround mode. It has a "next mode" and "previous mode" button. The same deal for inputs. This way they can make multiple AVR models that have a variable number of inputs and sound modes, but still be able to use the same remote.

Unfortunately, this means that building a universal remote control that works well with that AVR is next to impossible. For a universal remote to work well, you can't have "toggle" settings. You need a different IR code for on, a different code for off, and a different code for each input (etc, etc).

And that is why I couldn't really recommend a Harmony remote to anyone. It would just provide a leaky abstraction that would often break, especially if someone changed the state of the equipment through some method other than the harmony remote.


_________________
Hey, I don't have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I've failed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my wife. I love my life. And I wish you my kind of success.
- Dicky Fox

shabbs

shabbs
Hall of Famer
Hall of Famer

My Harmony sends distinct power on/power off signals to my Yammy. Perhaps the issue is when the device itself does not support it. For things that toggle on my one, it has a toggle selection (ie: AM/FM toggle). And for the cycle ones, it has specific ones to each item you can cycle through. Considering how many different models and devices are out there, not surprising there are some issues.

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