Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 16-20 of 603
 Harmony remotes are the best universal remotes February 11, 2007
C. BLANCHARD (Tucson, AZ)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
The Harmony remotes are wonderful. The 550 is perfect for my setup (HDTV, DVD/CD player, Set-top cable box/DVR, Audio receiver). The remote has simple buttons: Watch TV, Listen to Radio, Watch DVD, Play a CD. You program the remote by connecting it to your PC (in my case, a Mac) and through a fairly geeky process, set up the remote to match your components (Logitech has a huge database with info on every component known to man!). You'll need to tweak some settings but once you learn how, it's fairly easy. Once you're done, the Harmony remote replaces your coffee table full of remotes. Very liberating. Some of the buttons are a bit small but otherwise, I highly recommend these - the 550 particularly.
 Remote ok, software fatally flawed February 24, 2007
Electronics and Gadgets Enthusiast (CA)
7 out of 13 found this review helpful
The software you use to program the remote requires you to log in every time you start it, and times out after a while, requiring you to log in again. If your internet connection is down, or if the website at the other end is down (happening right now as I type), you will NOT be able to program your remote!
Doesn't work in all situations April 29, 2007
D. Fontanesi (carlsbad, california)
7 out of 11 found this review helpful
We spent several weeks trying to make this remote work with our equipment (an HD Motorola Cable Box, Sony TV, Tivo and Panasonic DVD/VcR). We had the Cable company check, Tivo check, and BestBuy where we bought the TV came out three times. There is only one way to wire the whole system and that way would not work with the remote. We spoke to Logitech many times, but they were unable to make it work. (Sometimes it's very annoying to try to talk to someone with a thick accent who is telling you technical stuff.) Anyway, they finally agreed the remote would not work with the way the equipment is wired, so in other words, it doesn't work in all situations. My advice, try to get it set up quickly in order to get a refund if it doesn't work.
 Nearly greatest remote ever August 9, 2006
N. Quam (Sarasota, FL)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
This remote certainly IS universal. There was not one thing in my living room it would not control... at least things that have IR sensors. If you're thinking about the Xbox version of the harmony, don't. This one controls the 360 anyway and even controls PS2, PS2 slim, Xbox and PCs with IR sensors.
This controls TVs, HDTVs, Cable boxes, DVRs, digital projectors, PCs, game systems, and probably anything else with an infrared sensor.
If you want to know if this controller will work for your system go to Logitech's website and you can take it for a "test drive" and set up a mock controller to see if it has your devices in it.
The only negative points with this control are minimal.
1. The harmony program needs an Internet connection to do anything and uses close to 400Mb of RAM. If you're running a system with less than 756Mb of memory you might have issues. It will run with 512mb of memory and a little slow here and there but no real issues. I don't see this running on 256Mb of memory with XP.
2. Some devices are a little slow to respond with the controller. Harmony controls all of my devices instantly with no issues. The only two are controlling volume on my receiver is a millisecond behind. Controlling my DVR is an issue though. It is a little slow on the Guide and selecting things. It's very slow when pressing play or pause but instant with fast forward and reverse. So maybe it's a little iffy on the DVR but it controls everything else.
The biggest selling point for this is the activities. If you go in and take the time to program your remote completely you will be happy with it. You can set up all your own activities. The first time you set it up you won't have all the activities you want like Play Xbox 360 or Use PC. You can program it though. You can also change what any button does and program your own buttons. If you select Watch PVR it turns on your TV, DVR and home theater system. If you select Play PS2(you'll have to set it up) it will turn on your PS2, switch your input on your TV and switch the input on your home theater. You can set this up for any device available on the remote.
This control is not hard to work with if you read the manual. The program takes you through each step of setting up the remote and its not hard. I have a samsung DLP HDTV and I have no issues with it changing the input. You can tell it to wait to give input signals so your TV can warm up first if you have a DLP.
If you have a complete home theater with multiple items this is definitely worth the money. This will control multiple TVs so if you ever lose a remote for a TV somewhere else this thing can still work it. I only rate this one below a 5 because the software has its issues and is a memory hog. The control takes some time and effort to set up. You will devote about 1-2 hours to setting this up. Mine took me under an hour but I'm very tech saavy and work with tons of advanced electronics. I imagine anyone can set this up if they take a little time to read the manual.
Not the highest-end, but that's not what you're looking for December 13, 2006
J. Lewis (Somerville, MA USA)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I'm a home theater junkie, and I've been searching for the perfect remote that can replace all others for a while. The problem is that I'm not willing to pay for the highest-end Harmonys, a Pronto, or some other $500-1000 remote. I know that they'll do absolutely everything that I want, but I have better ways to spend my money. However, I was still frustrated with my almost-but-not-quite-perfect remote that came with my Denon receiver. When the price on this went down around $100 I knew that I had to give it a try. The software takes some tweaking to get it to do exactly what you want (the trick is knowing exactly what your receiver/DVD player/CD player/TV needs to do), but I've been able to program absolutely everything directly into the remote. If I hadn't, I've heard great things about their customer support, but I've been lucky enough not to have needed it. The remote's highest compliment comes from my fiancee, who has never needed to pick up another remote since I set this up, and has never asked me to fix our (admittedly complicated) system when it's gotten into a funny state. The "Help" button at the top does wonders in fixing problems that might have come up from the system being in an unknown setting, or the remote not being pointed at the components. Now, with the 550 I have one-touch access to "Watch a DVD," "Listen to CD," "Listen to DVD-Audio," "Watch TV," and "Play Gamecube."
My only complaint with this is that the volume and channel buttons could be a bit more responsive. They require too much of a click and aren't easily repeatedly clicked up or down. Still, it's not enough for me to knock my rating down below five stars.
I know that I could easily set all of the components up myself one-by-one, but why? Get this remote, spend your time programming it and tweaking it, and you won't be sorry.
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