So we’ve been in our house for two weeks now and are finally getting settled in and have pretty much everything done. All sorts of people have been in and out of the house setting up things like security systems, data lines, dish, internet, but most importantly was my media room! After the guys came to set it up I found out that I was going to have to deal with 5 remotes to get the system working. I asked them how much one of their remotes would cost me and they said about $300-$500 bucks. WHAT?! I don’t think so. They said that Bestbuy had some real good choices for fairly cheap so I made a stroll over there (twist my arm) to see what they had. I ended up grabbing a Logitech Harmony 670 remote (Price: $150) and taking it back to see if I could set it up.
The setup was really easy since these remotes come with a USB port on them you install their Harmony app on your machine (Win or Mac) and it takes you through the wizard. You enter in the model numbers of each device and it downloads the appropriate codes for the remote and configures it for you. Very nice.
What I get most about it is the ‘Activities’ button it has. What that does is make everything a one-button touch for what you’re trying to do so for example if I want to ‘Watch a DVD’ it will fire on the TV, DVD player, turn the receiver to the approriate input, change the input of the TV to DVD and you’re all set. Then, if you rather play Xbox, you can click on ‘Play Game’ and it’ll turn off the DVD player, flip everything over to Xbox and you’re good to go! It always is able to control every function from my Dish Network system which I never had the luxury of doing. So nice!!!
Anyway, so we have a much simpler setup downstairs and tried to be cheap and go with one of those $10 dollar RCA universal remotes but it stunk. You were having to hit the right input mode for every single device everytime, ugh. So I returned it and go the cheaper Logitech Harmony model, the 520, (Price: $99) for downstairs. Setup was a little more tricky this time but that was because my receiver was being fincky but all in all. I love both devices!
Side note: BTW, trying to get a Insignia TV setup on a non-Logitech universal remote is a HUGE pain since nobody has them as the manufacturer. Spent 2+ hours trying to find codes, entered over 75 codes and to no avail. With the logitech’s, they recognized them instantly.
There is something to be said about having only one device to control the entire media setup for a room and I also believe in giving prop’s to a good product. Highly recommended!
Technorati Tags: remote controls, logitech harmony, universal remotes, insignia, bradgarland
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