5 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
Solid remote, maybe not suitable for kids
Date of Review: Jan 16, 2007
The Bottom Line: If you have too many remotes laying around, buy this one and be done with it :-)
After buying another box to place in the entertainment center, which of course came with another remote, I jumped in and bought the Harmony 550 at BestBuy. Initially I was looking at the bigger (and more expensive) models, but one of the employees quickly talked me into buying the base model.
Got it to work within half an hour. Indeed, do not use the software delivered with the remote, but log on to logitech's website, create an account, and start programming it from there. Only then the real power of the remote is unlocked.
I added my Sony tv, philips dvd player, tivo and some other stuff to my list of devices. Adding a remote is as simple as punching in the model number printed often on the back of the device.
Apart from the predefined sets of keys/buttons/commands, it's possible to totally program this remote the way you like it. Each IR command can be placed under a button by simply selecting it from a list of available commands. If you think a command is not available in the list, let the remote learn the command by receiving the remote signal from the original remote. Very easy, very simple.
So far, the remote does everything what I want it to do: in one press of a button, switch on the tv, switch on the dvd player, open the tray, set the dvd to my dvd channel, set the sound of the tv to dynamic, change the color setting of the tv to... Well, you get the idea :-) Definitely a remote control for the control freaks, yet simple enough for the other people in the house.
A couple of remarks on the other reviews: I found that people haven't been looking hard enough for the solution for their problem:
- delay between commands : change settings of the device you're trying to control
- the screen is not big enough : well, let's just say that every screen can always be bigger (look at hdtvs...)
The only thing I haven't been able to do yet:
the sony tv toggles between Antenna and Cable by pressing a button. However, the remote doesn't know what the current state of the tv is. So then switching from watching TV over the antenna to watching cable sometimes works, depending on the state it is in.
But somebody probably found a solution to this, or maybe I should just punch one more button myself...
