Logitech - Harmony 659 LCD Remote Control Review

I was living in AV remote control hell for a long time. Remote controls (TV, receiver, DVD player, VCR, CD player, digital music player, etc.) littered my living room. My wife went as far as drawing diagrams and writing up instructions for which remotes to use when and in what sequence so that babysitters or visitors could enjoy our AV equipment.

It was annoying and frustrating. Quite often you would see "universal" remotes being sold by Radio Shack or other vendors that required hours of your time to set-up and all they would do was merge some of the functions of each remote into one unit that then became even more difficult to guess at what you wanted to control with which button.

Well, then I happened upon the Harmony 659 remote control. It has buttons like "Watch a movie", "Listen to Music" and "Watch TV". It looked like it was too good to be true - but in fact it does what you expect it to do and it does it well.

To set up the remote, you hook it up to your computer via a USB cable, install a helper application that allows the remote to receive information from a web page, then you're automatically taken to Logitech's configuration website where you type in the model numbers of your AV equipment. Once you've identified your equipment, you can configure what you want to happen when each of the activity buttons are pressed. For example, to watch a movie the following has to take place (on my AV system):

1. ensure the DVD player is on (if not, turn it on)
2. ensure the receiver is on and set to DVD as the input (if not, make it so)
3. ensure the TV is on and set to VIDEO 1 (if not, make it so)

You get the idea - it's a long list that gets distilled to a single button click "Watch a movie". The other good part is that the Harmony 659 remote control is aware of what state it's in, meaning if you want to switch from watching a movie to listening to music, it knows that it needs to shut down the DVD player and turn on my networked MP3 player, but all the receiver needs is to change the input source (no need to turn it on). Once you're done watching, listening or whatever else, all you have to click is Power Off and all of the AV systems that are active are shut off.

Because the Harmony 659 remote control downloads all of the necessary signal information from the Logitech configuration website, I don't have to train the remote in all of the various functions of the any of my equipment. It will even download the latest TV listings that can be viewed on the remotes LCD screen! The LCD screen which is flanked by three buttons on each of the left and right sides (6 total), provides access to more detailed functions that each piece of your AV equipment may have or that is relevant to the activity in which you are engaged.

Bottom line - simple elegance in a thoughtfully designed truly universal remote control.

Highly recommended.

http://www.logitech.com