The secret ingredient in any home theater is the right universal remote control. And it's no secret that our special blend involves a few different Harmony Remotes strategic placed throughout our homes. If you're still living without a universal remote control, still forcing friends and relatives to sort through multiple remotes just to do the simplest things, you owe it to yourself to spice it up a bit. Give it a try, you'll love it.


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Interesting that you don't mention the 670. It's the updated version of the old 659 and is a much better entry level remote than the 5xx series.

The buttons on the 880/890 suck. They're too close together. You can't tell what to press by feel or position.

The One is by far the best combination of ergonomics and functionality. The buttons are great and the touch screen is not only cool but works well, too.

I really wish harmony would use the Euro versions with the colored buttons (red, green, blue, yellow) since a lot of U.S. equipment now has those (specifically the DirecTV dvrs).

My wife calls the Harmony the "female remote" (her words, not mine!) because you only have to press one button to get it to do what you want to do (watch TV, watch a DVD, etc.). And if something doesn't work there is a built-in help feature that will fix the problem for you. Very kid-wife-babysitter-grandparent-etc friendly.

I'm always suspicious of any remote that advertises "one button" access to anything. I have a large screen Samsung TV, fed by a Blu-Ray player, VCR, DirecTV receiver and also watch HD over the air. I'd love to be able to hit a single button to switch from DirecTV mode to TV mode, but even using the Samsung TV remote you can't do that. You must cycle through the inputs using the INPUT button on the remote - there's no way to just hit a single button for the input you want. I did notice that when I replaced my Oppo DVD player with the Sony Blu-ray that just turning on the Sony with the remote DOES switch the TV input to the DVD player (I'm using HDMI for the DVD). So, maybe more up-to-date device combinations may indeed be able to work well with the "single button" remotes?

That's exactly what the Harmony remotes provide - one button to do everything you just mentioned. The way it works is that you tell the Harmony how each device switches inputs (a button to directly choose each input or cycle through a list of inputs) and the power configuration (one button power toggle or separate on and off buttons). It has these set by default for each device but you can set or change them yourself.

When you setup each activity, you tell it which devices are used and which inputs are required for that activity. The harmony keeps track of each device and which input it is currently on and the power status. When you select an activity, the harmony compares the current device state to the desired state and dynamically figures out which devices need to be turned off and on and issues those commands accordingly. You have the option of leaving devices on and not turning them off when switching activities (useful if you plan to switch back and forth a lot).
The harmony then dynamically figures out which input needs to be selected and how to get there. This is the most powerful part of the harmony remotes.

E.g. If you must cycle through a list of inputs, then you tell the remote the list of inputs and the order and how to navigate the list and select one. Let's say your inputs are A, B and C and you have an activity that uses each input and it requires pressing the next input button to cycle through the list.

Let's say you're on activity A using input A and you select activity B that needs input B. The harmony will issue one "next input" command.
If you're on Activity A and select activity C that needs input C it will send 2 "next input" commands.

It dynamically figures out how to get from one input to the other. All other universal remotes that can do this requires explicit code programming to do this. The harmony does it for you out of the box with minimal configuration and no coding.

Got it?

Got it. It's quite a simple concept of course, but one that I'd not seen implemented in a remote. Looks like one of these remotes is in my future. Thanks for the detailed info.