Fantastic Remote!

Several months ago we decided to update our entertainment equipment. We bought a 46" Sony Bravia XBR4 LCD TV and a Playstation 3. We had an existing Sony VCR/DVD system. Not a full blown home theater but with our Comcast HD DVR cable box we have four components to control.

I talked my wife into buying a universal remote and I chose the Harmony One. I have been very pleased with it overall. Most ued functions are on the keypad and other functions for the device or activity may be found or programmed into the LCD display. A nice touch I think. There is only one device that it is not compatible with and that is the Playstation 3 because that component uses Bluetooth. I bought a Nyco remote control for the Playstation 3. It is an IR transmitter that uses a USB receiver. More about that later.

The remote software is incredibly easy to set-up with an easy to semi-difficult ease of use depending on how gadgety one is. I'm pretty gadgety but it still took me a little while to get the remote set up just the way I wanted. The real time is taken up by digging deeper into the menu options to "finesse" the remote to your particular setup. I didn't have to use the help menu much if at all. You can even program pages to display (and tune to your favorite channels). What's really neat is that you can actually program each favorite "button" with an icon for the station (you know the NBC "peacock" and the CBS "eye"). The icons within the software program are limited but you can download and import .jpeg files for station icons from this website http://www.iconharmony.com/icons/ . You simply download the zipped files and save them on your computer and your can transfer them to the Harmony One.

This unit is incredibly flexible. Let me get back to the Nyko remote I mentioned earlier. I had to do IR transfer between the Nyko remote and the Harmony One. This was a little tedious but there are no remotes programmed into the database. Everything went well, but when I actually tried to use the Harmony with the Playstation, specifically navigate the Playstation menu using the X-Bar, the menu jumped several places everytime I pushed a directional button on the Harmony One. Although it took a little digging to find the answer, it seems that the good folks at Logitech seem to have thought of everything. In the device troubleshooting menu, there are commands that allow you to alter the ways that a signal is sent to a device, that is to either slow it up (by not having it transmit so many times) or speed it up (by having it transmit more times). The default setting for this function is three. I changed this to one, plugged in the Harmony and reprogrammed it and voila!, it works perfectly with my Playstation now. Now I truly have one remote for every device I have. I was very impressed by this level of customization and would highly recommed the Harmony One to anyone so long as it falls within their budget.