Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Harmony remote for christmas ?s

The WAF played into my choice, gotta admit.

If I remember right you can go to Logitechs website and preprogram your remote as a guest, before you buy it! You will need the model numbers of all the items you want to have it set up and then you are off. I know I was able to do it a few years back before I bought mine.

I much prefer the Universal remotes for reasons I have pounded on several times here.;)

Having said that(again), you may want to google the 550. I did some research for a friend and the comments on the reliability/performance of the 550 seemed to come up a bit short. If you really want a Harmony, it might be worth a few $$ to upgrade.

I have just received a Harmony 688 remote, and must say that it's a revelation. All the other remotes have been retired.

I have two gripes: the first is that when I press "Watch DVD", I want the custom DVD-centric LCD buttons to be the first screen, and they're not. For some reason the TV-centric buttons are always first (at least according to Logitech's tech support e-mail response).

The second gripe is that the 688 has a button labeled "sound", which I want to program to change the Audio function of the DVD player. Alas, the "sound" option is not available in the Harmony configuration software, even though the picture of the 688 clearly shows the button and it is physically present on the remote. I have worked around this nit by having the button labeled "guide" change the Audio function. Cludgy, and should be able to be fixed.

Otherwise, the 688 has received rave reviews from my wife, mother-in-law, and even my 5-yr old son. He especially like the "big new remote"

And, finally, since the price of the 688 is now under $100, it's hard not to recommend at that price point.

Well I went ahead and cracked the package open and programmed it.
Because of some of the wording and general software appearance/layout this thing was a MAJOR PITA to get going.
The 1st time I called supoort I was on hold for 25 minutes but once I actually got to talk to someone she was very helpful and had me understandining the software a little better. After fiddleing with the remote for a few minutes I decided I wanted to change some things. Easier said than done. The second time I called support I was on hold for 35 minutes . When I finally talked to the next person he WASNT nearly as helpful.
I asked him if there was a way I could just start over and erase everything I had already programmed? He said, "There should be but I dont know, I'm just trained to ask certain questions."
About the time he said that i noticed a tiny trashcan icon next to some of my programmed activities. I asked if that would do the trick? Again he didnt know. At this point I just clicked icon and "poof" that activity was erased.
I told the guy thanks for letting me teach him something and hung up.
Now that I've got it basically programmed, I think I'm going to like it.
Time will tell.

If I find anything more positive or negative about I'll let ya'll know.

I've got the 880 and have found the Logitech remotes fairly simple to program, after initial programing I'll go back and tweak a few settings, I've got mine set so it will control every operation I use ,SatTV, DVD, HD DVD, Xbox360, SACD, CD direct, Tivo, all with one push of a button.
Doesn't get much easier than that.

I must have been REALLY good this year, because I just got a late gift tonight...the Logitech 880 remote.

I almost hate to ask, but there is more customization available than just what you see in the test drive, right? I'd like to be able to assign stuff to buttons, at the very least.

On the three that I own 659,688,880, you can customize them to learn any commands that exist on your devices remotes, I went back in after intial setup and assigned other commands that I wanted into my Harmony's.

Oh good. The test drive just has you set up activities, which seem fairly limited. I don't necessarily just want to turn stuff on...