Another vote for the Harmony One. An excellent piece of kit and I managed to pick it up for £85 (new) from eBay. The HDR is not currently in their database of supported products but is very easy to program. It is in - look for FOXSAT-HDR and it's there; but several commands are missing, as I said, I had to use learn to add MEDIA and OPT+.
I had been using the harmony one for ages but I find a couple of things annoying about it.
The first is that it doesn't have any hard buttons for the colours (and as you use them a lot on uk kit it's a pain). You can assign them to the soft buttons on the touch screen which brings me to issue 2 - on the touchscreen it is very easy to hit the wrong button. Not so much of a problem when I had sky but the foxsat HDR is so sensitive to angle for the remote that you generally aren't looking at the screen when you press a button - so regularly hit the wrong one.
So, I have now gone back to the 885. The screen display is not as crisp but it has physical buttons for the colours and the selection of the on screen virtual buttons are done via a real button as well - that means I don't have to look at the screen to hit the right function.
The one is a great remote but I find the virtual buttons way to annoying. The 885 is almost as good but for me the physical buttons are a bonus.
I have a Harmony 555 and have programmed via the Logitech database a couple of days ago so it is on there!
However, I find the remote hard to use, the buttons are not very positive and sticky and as far as its 'green' credentials are concerned 'they suck'.
Everything has to be left in standby to get the maximum benefit from it. That's a lot of watts if u are controlling 5 devices as I do. Only bought it because 'WhatHiFi' gave it 5 stars, wish I hadn't bothered!
Everything has to be left in standby to get the maximum benefit from it. That's a lot of watts if u are controlling 5 devices as I do.
I sympathise with your concern. Unfortunately the Harmony is an American designed product.
I suggest using a 4 into 1 trailing mains lead so that you can turn off four devices by switching off at the wall socket when you have finished for the evening.
No remote can control a device that has no power! (i.e. physically remove and supply power!!) Hence, devices do need to be in a standby mode. This is why energy saving devices such as the HDR, which consumes only 1W in standby is important! Five energy efficient made devices in standby would consume only 5W... I would blame the individual device manufacturers for the lack of efficiency rather than the remote device company...
The Harmony will still work well if you decide to manually power on and off your devices via the power socket - just tell the remote that your individual devices have no power on/off button... (and power them all on before using the remote!)
I have to manually turn my (original) Xbox on and off and the Harmony works just fine with this, just like any other device in my set up!
*They still had Canadian support staff, when I first called their support line a few years ago!
I've just ordered a 525 from Amazon, mainly for the other half who can't cope with selecting the different inputs for the TV and turning on the Freeview or Freesat box.
Just a thought how does it cope if you are watching say Freesat and decide to watch a DVD. Would you have to setup an activity. How many activities can you have ?
Oh and finally is there a forum for these things ?
Just a thought how does it cope if you are watching say Freesat and decide to watch a DVD. Would you have to setup an activity. How many activities can you have ?
This is the idea of the Harmony. You can set up as many activities as you want, until you run out of memory (on the remote)... (I have 12 activities on my 525, ranging from Listen to CD - which only turns on the DVD player and the AVR, to watching Freesat with DD5.1 on optical...)
Oh and finally is there a forum for these things ?
Just a thought how does it cope if you are watching say Freesat and decide to watch a DVD. Would you have to setup an activity. How many activities can you have ?
You can just use a device for watching DVD and "lie" to the Programming tool that the volume commands are actually those from the TV remote.
An activity gives these extra functions :
1. Tries to be intelligent and swicth on/off all the devices iinvolved (for me often messes up and confuses more often than not.
2. Lets you pick whcih buttons do what from each device involved i.e. you pick whether left/right etc does a TV left/right or a DVD left/right. As noted above you can achieve this in device mode by programming from several remotes.
3. Allows you to associate a sequence of button presses with a single button on the remote e.g. do schedule + Red when you press guide. For me this is the only useful part of an activity and thats pretty dubious.
I have been using a harmony 895 for some time to control all my gear. i just got a Foxsat HDR and it works extremely well with it. The website found it instantly and I only had to add a few extra functions using the learning feature.
Thanks for all the replies, I've checked on Logitechs website and all my devices are listed (inc Foxsat-HD PVR)
You'll still have to add a few things with the learn function. I've needed to add MEDIA, OPT+, Skip forwards and Skip back so far. But it's dead simple to do so.
I think it looks better than the Harmony and I hope it works just as well. Looks like I will have to program the opt and media keys just like the Harmony.
Harmony One is good. The software is a bit klunky and didn't seem Vista compatible but after the first couple of days I've never needed to use it again.
I've had several multi-remotes over the years and the Harmony One is the only one that has felt natural. Everything I want to do these days needs more than one item switched on so having the Harmony do that is cool. I have buttons for:
Sky - power on TV then Sky+
DTT - power on TV then Humax
Music - power on Squeezebox then amplifier on optical input 1
DVD - power on TV, power on DVD player by sending the eject command, power on amplifier to optical input 2.
The only issue I had was input selection for the TV.
My Toshiba only has 'single press for next input' or 'hold down for menu' and both are stateless so can't be programmed into the remote. The profile for my TV includes buttons that claim to select specific inputs but they don't work. Luckily I have an electronic SCART switchbox but I was hoping I could program it to change to HDMI for the DVD player since it upscales and my computer for when I play back recorded FreeSat HD content.
The logitech one only got 1 star from the gadget show review and they do look cheaply made, unlike the Philips which won the comparison.
I wouldn't take that show too seriously
But if the Philips is really half the price of the 525/555 and is 'activity' based, and can control up to 10 devices and is a learning remote... then, yes, it is worth a look into...
I have the Philips Prestigo SRU 8015 and I have never regrettted buying it to replace a Harmony. They are far too fiddly to set up in my opinion (and the web site is a pain!)
My Philips had the codes in for the Humax HDR under satellite, yes I had to learn it a few button presses, but most were already available under more. You can program activities just the same with the Philips remotes and best of all, set up all your favourite channels (by learning the remote the number to switch to)
Its only fault is that if you are constantly button pressing for a long time (such as the right arrow key for example) it crashes, and you have to just take out a battery then put it in again to get it going again.
But all its other fantastic attributes are worth putting up with that small quirk.
I love it and wouldn't part with it for any Harmony!
Thanks for the info, my one worry was because its not internet based, it would have no code or setup options for the HDR. Hopefully the 8 wont have the crashing problem.
Hows the battery life on it?
I had a one for all Kameleon once and I was lucky to get a week out of it.
Thanks for the info, my one worry was because its not internet based, it would have no code or setup options for the HDR. Hopefully the 8 wont have the crashing problem.
Hows the battery life on it?
I had a one for all Kameleon once and I was lucky to get a week out of it.
Oh it last far longer than a week! And obviously gets used all the time because I don't rely on any other remotes just the Philips. Although the screen lights up when you touch it to access something, it soon goes out again which does help to sustain the battery life. In the SRU 8015 they are three AA batteries and last at least three or four months of good use. It is very sternly built as well. (and looks the biz with its piano black finish.)
I don't think this is an 'activity' based remote (but it has macros)... The activity based one is the SRU8015 available at Dixons at £122. Are you getting the SRU8008 in store, it is not available online..?
The Harmony 525 is available from Misco at £32 and the 555 is £40...
Comments
I had been using the harmony one for ages but I find a couple of things annoying about it.
The first is that it doesn't have any hard buttons for the colours (and as you use them a lot on uk kit it's a pain). You can assign them to the soft buttons on the touch screen which brings me to issue 2 - on the touchscreen it is very easy to hit the wrong button. Not so much of a problem when I had sky but the foxsat HDR is so sensitive to angle for the remote that you generally aren't looking at the screen when you press a button - so regularly hit the wrong one.
So, I have now gone back to the 885. The screen display is not as crisp but it has physical buttons for the colours and the selection of the on screen virtual buttons are done via a real button as well - that means I don't have to look at the screen to hit the right function.
The one is a great remote but I find the virtual buttons way to annoying. The 885 is almost as good but for me the physical buttons are a bonus.
However, I find the remote hard to use, the buttons are not very positive and sticky and as far as its 'green' credentials are concerned 'they suck'.
Everything has to be left in standby to get the maximum benefit from it. That's a lot of watts if u are controlling 5 devices as I do. Only bought it because 'WhatHiFi' gave it 5 stars, wish I hadn't bothered!
I suggest using a 4 into 1 trailing mains lead so that you can turn off four devices by switching off at the wall socket when you have finished for the evening.
Unfortunately, Harmony was originally Canadian*, and now owned by the Swiss Logitech company... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony_Remote)
No remote can control a device that has no power! (i.e. physically remove and supply power!!) Hence, devices do need to be in a standby mode. This is why energy saving devices such as the HDR, which consumes only 1W in standby is important! Five energy efficient made devices in standby would consume only 5W... I would blame the individual device manufacturers for the lack of efficiency rather than the remote device company...
The Harmony will still work well if you decide to manually power on and off your devices via the power socket - just tell the remote that your individual devices have no power on/off button... (and power them all on before using the remote!)
I have to manually turn my (original) Xbox on and off and the Harmony works just fine with this, just like any other device in my set up!
*They still had Canadian support staff, when I first called their support line a few years ago!
Just a thought how does it cope if you are watching say Freesat and decide to watch a DVD. Would you have to setup an activity. How many activities can you have ?
Oh and finally is there a forum for these things ?
Cheers
I've just managed to get my Panasonic TV working with it.
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showpost.php?p=29785442&postcount=104
You can just use a device for watching DVD and "lie" to the Programming tool that the volume commands are actually those from the TV remote.
An activity gives these extra functions :
1. Tries to be intelligent and swicth on/off all the devices iinvolved (for me often messes up and confuses more often than not.
2. Lets you pick whcih buttons do what from each device involved i.e. you pick whether left/right etc does a TV left/right or a DVD left/right. As noted above you can achieve this in device mode by programming from several remotes.
3. Allows you to associate a sequence of button presses with a single button on the remote e.g. do schedule + Red when you press guide. For me this is the only useful part of an activity and thats pretty dubious.
I think this is a shame because the remote supplied by Humax works extremely well, is very easy to use and controls all my boxes:)
But it's nowhere near as good as the Harmony for my purposes, and it's much less tolerant of sloppy aiming. It's a bit cheaper though
I agree. The only reason I've ordered a harmony is because my other half struggles with the different inputs.
I constantly find the TV on analogue because she can't remember that HDMI2 output is the Foxsat box and EXT1 is the Freeview box !!
I'm hoping the activities functions will make this easier for her, and give me less grief.
http://www.consumer.philips.com/consumer/en/gb/consumer/cc/_productid_SRU8008_10_GB_CONSUMER/Universal-remote-control+SRU8008-10
I think it looks better than the Harmony and I hope it works just as well. Looks like I will have to program the opt and media keys just like the Harmony.
Why are the colour buttons all the way at the top?! (Again another remote designed, not for the UK, but altered to sell to us...)
I've had several multi-remotes over the years and the Harmony One is the only one that has felt natural. Everything I want to do these days needs more than one item switched on so having the Harmony do that is cool. I have buttons for:
Sky - power on TV then Sky+
DTT - power on TV then Humax
Music - power on Squeezebox then amplifier on optical input 1
DVD - power on TV, power on DVD player by sending the eject command, power on amplifier to optical input 2.
The only issue I had was input selection for the TV.
My Toshiba only has 'single press for next input' or 'hold down for menu' and both are stateless so can't be programmed into the remote. The profile for my TV includes buttons that claim to select specific inputs but they don't work. Luckily I have an electronic SCART switchbox but I was hoping I could program it to change to HDMI for the DVD player since it upscales and my computer for when I play back recorded FreeSat HD content.
Ah well
The logitech one only got 1 star from the gadget show review and they do look cheaply made, unlike the Philips which won the comparison.
But if the Philips is really half the price of the 525/555 and is 'activity' based, and can control up to 10 devices and is a learning remote... then, yes, it is worth a look into...
Let us know how you get on...
My Philips had the codes in for the Humax HDR under satellite, yes I had to learn it a few button presses, but most were already available under more. You can program activities just the same with the Philips remotes and best of all, set up all your favourite channels (by learning the remote the number to switch to)
Its only fault is that if you are constantly button pressing for a long time (such as the right arrow key for example) it crashes, and you have to just take out a battery then put it in again to get it going again.
But all its other fantastic attributes are worth putting up with that small quirk.
I love it and wouldn't part with it for any Harmony!
GG
Hows the battery life on it?
I had a one for all Kameleon once and I was lucky to get a week out of it.
GG
The only remote at £40 half price is the SRU9600: http://www.dixons.co.uk/martprd/store/dix_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0680936487.1230831041@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccchadegdjmfhedcflgceggdhhmdgmj.0&page=Product&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=722515&category_oid=
I don't think this is an 'activity' based remote (but it has macros)... The activity based one is the SRU8015 available at Dixons at £122. Are you getting the SRU8008 in store, it is not available online..?
The Harmony 525 is available from Misco at £32 and the 555 is £40...