14 out of 14 people found this review helpful.
Versatile but pricy remote with good looks
Date of Review: Jul 31, 2006
The Bottom Line: In summary, this is a costly remote, but it can do things most others can't. The more complex your needs are, the more worthwhile you'll find one of these.
I've been trying all sorts of "Universal" remotes over the years, trying to find one that can actually take the place of my 6 or 7 assorted remotes that came with my AV devices. I've basically steered clear of anything in the $100+ price range, with the philosophy that a remote has no need to cost anywhere near that much, when it's little more than a keypad with an infrared flashing LED light on one end.
For the budget-minded consumer, I had relatively good results with the "All in One" Cinema series remotes. They don't have any LCD displays or even a backlight, but they're typically only $25 or so at the local chain stores, and newer ones even feature the "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" buttons needed for a Tivo. Of course, they still don't work *all* of the functions of something complex like my Kenwood surround sound receiver, and can only learn so many commands from your other remotes (say, tracking adjustments for a VCR). But they let me hide away my original remotes to pull out only for special situations.
That being said, I *now* ran into a need for something more. Thanks to a fight with a live-in girlfriend, all of my original remotes have vanished (thrown away in a fit of anger?). The dilemma? With no original remotes, most "learning" remotes are useless to me! Logitech saved the day with the Harmony 550!
Unlike almost all the other remotes on the market, the Harmony downloads all of its programming info for your devices from a web site. You create a user account on www.harmonyremote.com first, and then you describe the make and model of all of your devices you want to control. They store all of this info for you, so you won't need to remember that your TV is, say, model KLVGR-55014, after you find the info on it the first time.
Their programming software works along-side of the web site, to ensure your remote has the latest firmware loaded into it, as well as your device settings - and they support both Apple Mac and Windows PCs.
My experience so far is, Logitech lives up to their claims about supporting a huge number of devices! I was even able to select devices I hadn't thought of before, like my Apple MacBook Pro, for it to remote control! It can control other "oddball" things like X10 appliance and light controllers, ceiling fans or air conditioners too. Even my home-brew "MythTV" PVR box with a Hauppage PVR-250 tuner card in it was fully supported!
The ability to combine several tasks under one heading is very nicely done too. It can be rather slow sending a whole string of commands, depending on what you want to do. But it sure beats trying to fiddle with 3 or 4 different devices to switch from listening to the stereo to watching your PVR! (EG. My "Watch PVR" command turns on my receiver, sets it to VIDEO1, sets my TV to the DVI input, and configures the volume up/downl controls on the remote to work my receiver, vs. the TV set itself.)
The downsides? Well, first off, the bottom portion of this remote has very small buttons. If you like to punch in radio stations or TV stations by number often, it will annoy you quickly. Also, it's too bad it doesn't use rechargeable batteries. (Apparently, they make you pay about $100 more for a model with those and a charging base!) Lastly, Logitech's computer software could be a little bit better. For starters, their printed instructions tell you to install the software off their CD and then visit the web site to proceed. BUT - they neglect to give you the web site address to visit! (Again, it's www.harmonyremote.com - which redirects you to some page on logitech.com.) After I got that all sorted out, it was basically fine, but as a Mac OS X user, I didn't care for the way they told me to go to "Preferences" in their software and configure it to "use the same patch that Safari is configured to use for downloading your files". Why not automatically get that info out of Safari's configuration and plug it in? Mac users like things to "just work" without having to specify such details! And what about OS X users who prefer using Firefox or some other web browser? Logitech assumes Safari is the only one we'd ever use, I suppose.
