A while back I decided to replace my four remotes in the living room with a universal remote I picked up from Target. What a piece of junk! I could control everything from one remote, but watching a DVD required something like this:
TV button, Power, wait, channel down, channel down, DVD Button, Play
Switching back to the TV then required:
Power, TV button, channel up, channel up, Sat button (for my DTV converter box), Power
It was so bad that I dreaded trying to explain to a babysitter how to show the girls a movie!
Logitech's Harmony remotes solve this problem by letting you connect the remote to the computer to fully customize. They are the perfect combination of nerd and couch potato, but are usually around $100--which seems a bit much for a remote. After a friend's testimonial and a $30 deal for a new one on eBay, mine showed up yesterday.
It took me a couple hours to get it all working right, because I have some weird equipment attached to my TV, but those long sequences from before have been replaced by two button presses each. I can fully customize different activities, programming the correct button sequences for each device, making everything much easier to use.
I still have room to control eight more devices with this remote, so I guess I am going to have to start looking for some more toys. I am confident that no matter what I add to my pile, it will be so easy even the babysitter could do it.
That looks pretty cool, but I'm not sure I could figure that one out.
ReplyDeleteThe only tricky part is just setting it up. Once that is done you just push the big Activities button ans select what you want from the screen. The remote then takes care of turning the right equipment on and selecting the channels and everything.
ReplyDeleteYou can see the screen better if you click on the picture to make it larger.