Logitech Harmony® 880 LCD Remote Control

I bought one from Best Buy hoping that I would finally be able to put away all of my remotes. I still own a Philips Pronto but stopped using it after I got my Tivo. Touch screens are fine for occasionally hitting a button but if you're like me and bounce between the FF, pause/play, and guide buttons quickly, a touch screen does not work well; you need hard buttons.

I had heard good things about the Harmony remotes and everyone said wait until the Harmony 880 comes out, it'll be the ultimate remote. On paper, it seemed ideal. My main interest in it was that Logitech (supposedly) kept an updated device list. I've yet to find a universal remote that understands all of equipment so the thought of me not having to have the Harmony learn any of my remotes sounded very appealing.

Pros:

Looks nice. Very nice color screen. Lots of buttons. Turns on when the remote is tilted. Has a timer to turn off color screen. My TV does not have discrete video input selection but the Harmony knew to use the method of tuning to the cable input first and cycling TV/Video until it got to the proper video input. There's a Help button that lets you troubleshoot a device not operating as expected. I'm the only one that understands how my system is setup. If I have someone housesitting for me, I can just tell them to hit the activity button to do what they want and if there's a problem, press the Help button and it'll walk them through it.

Cons:

Some might consider this a pro but I consider rechargeable batteries a con. I've had many devices fail after a year or two because of the simple fact that all rechargeable batteries eventually fail. Now perhaps the power requirements of the remote are such that regular batteries aren't feasible but given a choice, I'd prefer being able to use regular batteries so I can get several years of use before having to get a replacement part.

I knew the Harmony 880 was setup using a computer. However, I thought it was through a standalone program that connected to the Internet to get its device list updated. Nope, it's done through a clunky web interface. It does not like Firefox so I had to use IE. I have XP SP2 so every time the web interface wanted to run something on my computer, I kept getting warnings. This really slowed down the process.

After registering my remote, I was ready to configure it. I was prompted for my devices and their manufacturers. So far, so good. The next part is where the web interface falls flat on its face. It asks you to TYPE the model number. It does not prompt you with a drop down list of devices for the make and model from the manufacturer. So for example, I have a Toshiba widescreen projection TV. I had to type the model number. Some model numbers have hyphens, others are often referred to by their short model numbers; it wasn't clear to me what was acceptable. I had read that the advantage of the Harmony remotes was that Logitech was constantly updating their device list. Well how about presenting us with that list so we can be sure we're entering the correct numbers? I entered the model numbers exactly as they appeared from each component's manual.

After everything was entered and the remote was updated (after a lengthy delay... is this thing using USB 1.1 rather than USB 2.0?), it was time to test. The Harmony configured the buttons next to the screen as activities--essentially macros that you have very little control over. For example, if you have a DVD player, there will be an activity for watching a DVD. If you have a PVR, there's one for watching the PVR. Selecting either one of those activities turns on your audio and video equipment and set them to the proper audio and video input.

My TV was already on. I pressed watch PVR. It turned off my TV. My TV does not have discrete on and off signals... it toggles. This is a problem with every universal remote I've owned so I can't blame the Harmony for doing this.

I was able to configure the Harmony not to turn on the TV when selecting an activity. However, pressing the Off button on the remote would no longer turn off my TV (which I expected). So I wanted to create an activity that would turn off all of my equipment including my TV. As far as I could tell, there was no way to do it. Oh there are ways to configure it to turn on certain devices, there just isn't any way to tell it to turn off certain devices. Also, there was an option I tried that gave me an error saying it was a problem with the website and the site administrator was contacted. Which also got me thinking, what happens if Logitech goes under (I know, very unlikely) or gives up on the universal remote business? You'll no longer be able to configure your remote. At least with the Pronto you used a standalone program to configure it and there is a large user community that offers downloadable remote configuration files.

Next thing I did was press the device list. The screen showed all of my devices. I pressed PVR. The screen now showed a page full of my remote commands. To see more commands, I could hit forwards and backwards to look at more pages. However, many of the remote commands I didn't recognize. I have an HDTV PVR from my cable company. Why is the Harmony displaying a button for PIP when it's not on the original remote and not possible through component video on my TV? There were many other buttons that it displayed that were not on the original remote. However, there was one very important button that was not displayed by the Harmony. The List button which allows me to choose a recorded show to play.

Next I selected my TV on the device list. I tried turning off my TV. Nothing happened. Is that because I told it not to turn off my TV when I selected an activity? That's just stupid.

I went through the other devices and found that there seemed to be no good organization of the remote commands. The more commonly used commands did not appear to be in the earlier pages... you had to press the forward button to get to them. And some commands were just flat out wrong.

After a while, I got so frustrated by the remote that I boxed it up and returned it.

I would have to say if your equipment is fairly new and your needs are very simple, this is probably a great remote for you. However, the inability to a program macro for turning off my equipment and the inaccurate and poorly laid out remote commands were a big turn off. Perhaps the next version of this remote would fix all these shortcomings. Until then, I would stay away from it.