This Should Work

Back in March, before my parents arrived for a visit, I typed up a set of instructions for them on how to work the AV equipment in our house. Here’s a brief sample of what it was like:

To use TV/Cable:

• Grab silver remote and press “All On” this should turn on both the TV and the cable box.
• Next, grab the small black remote (Onkyo). Press the power button in the upper right corner, then press the “CD” button
• You should now be able to both hear and see the TV. If there is no picture, pick up the other small black remote (Westinghouse) and press “Source” until it reaches “YprB1.”
• If you can’t hear the TV, make sure the reciever is on and set to “CD”. If there is a little orange light blinking, pick up the black remote (Onkyo) and press the “Muting” button. This should un-mute the stereo system.
• All other problems, call me at…

Needless to say, it was complicated to watch TV at our place.

Throw in another remote for the DVD player and it leaves little room left on the coffee table (or in our case ottomans) to place a beverage or a plate of food. Technically, two of the four remotes are “Universal” remotes, but they can only do the basic- On/Off, change channel, etc.- none of the more sophisticated stuff could be done- speaker adjustments, advanced menus, favorites, etc. So after a few weeks of research, I decided to go out on a limb and purchase the LogiTech Haromy 880 Universal Remote Control.

The nice thing about this remote is that it’s not pre-loaded with a bunch of generic appliance information- it’s blank slate that you program through LogiTech’s website. Tell Logitech which devices you want to control (and they’ve got a huge database of TVs, VCRs. DVD players, etc.), then plug your remote into your computer and Logitech pushes the all the information for the devices onto the remote.

Since Logitech continually updates it’s database, this is probably the last remote I’ll need to buy. But it gets better. Logitech allows you to program “Activities” which run multiple instructions with the push of one button. I’ve programmed an “activity called “Watch TV” which does the following with one button press:

• Turns on stereo receiver
• Sets the stereo receiver input setting to “CD”
• Turns on my Insight Cable DVR
• Turns on my TV
• Sets the TV input setting to “YprB1″

Now when people come over, all I’ll need to tell them is “Press the button reads ‘Watch TV.’” It makes life easier for me and for guest who want navigate my complicated A/V system.

It’s not completely perfect; it took about an hour to setup and another few hours of programming the “Activities” before the buttons worked properly. Every once in a while, when switching between Activites like “Watch TV” to “Watch DVD,” the remote would turn off certain devices like the TV or stereo receiver. However there’s a great Help menu that appears in the LCD screen at the top that walks through turning on the devices one by one-and it learns from these mistakes as well.

The only other downside is the number buttons are kinda low for someone with large hands. I find myself grabbing the remote and turning to channel 777 all the time. However, the positives of this remote outweigh the negatives and would recommend it to anyone who’s got three or more remotes in thier house.

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