What remote are people using these days. (2 Viewers)

[Stéphane Lenclud]

I have just upgraded to a Harmony Elite and love it.

http://www.logitech.com/en-au/product/harmony-elite

Got myself that Harmony 950 which is basically an Elite without the hub a few weeks back too. It is awesome. Though I find the hardware buttons a bit too noisy for my taste. I guess I was just expecting perfection for that kind of pricing.

The one thing I like on the 950 over the Elite is the one and only difference between those two remotes. That's the design of the 4 generic buttons at the bottom of the remote. Elite has two lamp buttons and two plug buttons. 950 displays one to four dots on those same buttons.

 

[2BitSculptor]

using the Harmony 300 w/ an mce receiver. all the features I need, and cheap enough on evil bay I bought a couple spares... b'cause they aren't made any more.... profit margin was too low.

 

[Skywizard]

I like the wirless capability of the elite as I have limited but workable control of my Sonos playBar and Amp without having to open an app that takes a fair amount of time.

I need to find out how to program the Vol up/down buttons to control the Playbar volume rather than MP volume.

 

[Stéphane Lenclud]

using the Harmony 300 w/ an mce receiver. all the features I need, and cheap enough on evil bay I bought a couple spares... b'cause they aren't made any more.... profit margin was too low.

With Elite they sure fixed the profit margin issues
I had sworn never the buy an Harmony cause too expensive. But those 950/Elite variants were just too good for me to keep looking away.

 

[Stéphane Lenclud]

I like the wirless capability of the elite as I have limited but workable control of my Sonos playBar and Amp without having to open an app that takes a fair amount of time.

I need to find out how to program the Vol up/down buttons to control the Playbar volume rather than MP volume.

Well I like simple, so I was not too keen on the hub. All 3 devices (SONOS PLAYBAR, Philips TV, HTPC) I want to control have IR and TBH I was already most happy with the level of control IR provides.

The SONOS capability of the Elite had me think twice though. So I looked into it and realized it was very limited anyway. Then I had to make sure the 950 hardware is indeed just an Elite without a hub thus, if and when you upgrade, your money is not lost.

You can control your Playbar using IR, been doing that ever since I got it a year ago. It has three IR functions, volume control, mute toggle and input switch. The later is only useful when you are listening to music and want to switch to TV/PC audio without using your smartphone app.

 

[ajs]

I use on of the two HTPC - HDMI-CEC
On 1 HTPC - iMON
On other HTPC - USB HID

 

[CyberSimian]

I bought a Harmony 650 a few weeks ago. Things I like :

(1) It is the only brand of universal remote that avoids the "toggle codes" bug present in the driver for the Microsoft "eHome Infrared Transceiver"; see this thread for details:
http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=385

(2) The setup software (once you have become familiar with it) is very slick, and makes it easy to set up "activities", which I really like. I have one outstanding problem, where the input is not switched correctly on the amplifier for one activity, but I think that this is a timing problem (need to add a pause after powering on the amplifier).

Things I dislike :

(1) The buttons wobble. This may seem like a strange criticism, but it degrades the user experience. The most capable remote that I have in my collection is the One-for-All Xsight Colour, which supports 15 devices and has 6 LCD buttons (3 each side of the LCD screen). It is also the remote that I dislike most, because most of the buttons are truly appalling -- they are small thin bars that are virtually level with the casing of the remote, and hence very difficult to press. The Harmony 650 is the opposite -- most of the buttons are thin bars that protrude too much, and tend to "tip over" when you press them, making it difficult to press them cleanly. The one exception is the OK button, which does not protrude enough. The best remote that I have in this respect is the One-for-All URC-7140, which has circular buttons, of good size, well spaced, and which protrude just the right amount.

(2) The buttons seem quite slow to operate, even on a single press (i.e. not a macro or sequence). There is a noticeable hesitation after pressing the button and before MP responds. In contrast, the One-for-All URC-7140 produces instant responses from MP.

(3) The shape of the underside of the casing is inimical to convenient use; yes, it is curved and not flat. Typically, I keep the remote on a coffee table next to my chair, and I like to be able to reach out and press buttons on the remote without picking it up. With the Harmony 650, pressing the VOLUME button in this way causes the remote to tip over (because of its curved underside). So adjusting the volume requires picking up the remote before pressing the button. In contrast, the One-for-All URC-7140 has a flat underside, and does not tip over in this scenario.

My ideal remote would be something along the lines of the URC-7140 with support for activities and elimination of the toggle-codes bug. Although it is possible to program the URC-7140 using the RMIR tool available from here:
http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/index.php
it requires a special cable, and I don't think that it can do activities (as far as I know, it does not support setting status flags to remember whether particular devices are powered on or off).

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

 

[Stéphane Lenclud]

(2) The buttons seem quite slow to operate, even on a single press (i.e. not a macro or sequence). There is a noticeable hesitation after pressing the button and before MP responds. In contrast, the One-for-All URC-7140 produces instant responses from MP.

The Harmony 950/Elite has the same problem over IR. My Prestigo is snappier. It seems to be an issue inherent to any Harmony remote. I remember reading about it on various forums.
Harmony has a noticeable lag between the time you hit a button and the time it sends the IR signal. That's most noticeable in use cases where you click multiple times a button, typically when scrolling through a list using direction arrow keys. I'm thinking it could be a side effect of the long press feature. In fact before sending the short press command the Harmony needs first to make sure you are not going for the long press and thus has to wait a bit inevitably. It could be worth testing if it is also an issue when not programming any long press function on a button, if at all possible. In that scenario the implementation could have been optimized.

 

[CyberSimian]

I'm thinking it could be a side effect of the long press feature. In fact before sending the short press command the Harmony needs to understand if you are going for the long press first and thus has to wait a bit inevitably.

Interesting. To support long-press/typamatic action, the remote must wait for one of the following when a button is pressed:

(1) The long-press/typamatic timeout to expire, or
(2) The button to be released.

If the remote sees (2), it can transmit the signal immediately (does not need to wait any more). I have just tested pressing and releasing as quickly as possible the UP and DOWN buttons in the EPG. I first used the Harmony 650, and then I used the One-for-All URC-7140. The Harmony is still perceptibly slower than the One-for-All.

I vaguely remember seeing references in posts elsewhere to a 300 millisec "interval" in the Harmony software. I had assumed that this was the default gap between successive commands in a sequence (macro), but maybe it also applies to single commands (i.e. the time that passes before the command is sent). I think that this interval can be reduced to 100 millisec, so I will see if I can find the setting in the Harmony software and try a smaller value.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

 

[Stéphane Lenclud]

The button to be released.

Maybe they don't do that properly either.

I vaguely remember seeing references in posts elsewhere to a 300 millisec "interval" in the Harmony software.

I played with that setting, I think I could reduce it to 0 but that did not help either. I think it's only used for macros.