Remotes (1 Viewer)

[MarkHastings]

Nathan, the Harmony can do all of that stuff you just mentioned.

EDIT: With the exception of the Devices and Activities being separate buttons...although you can click the device button and swap back and forth between the current activity and your devices list.


and the Harmony does these two things as well:

-The off button shuts everything down.

-When switching activities, the remote shuts off what needs to be off, but you can also specify what devices need to stay on...example: I like my cable box on at all times (for the time function), so when I switch over to something that doesn't use the cable box, I don't have the box turn off - not even when I hit the main power off button.

So it's definitely just as flexible as your JP1

 

[Mike Frezon]

And so resumes the Harmony love fest...

 

[Nathan Stohler]

Hi, Mark.

I know Harmony can do all that stuff. I was just pointing out that JP1 can be used to emulate the behavior of the Harmony remotes at a fraction of the price. My URC-9910 (with RF extender) was $40. A Harmony 880 plus an RF extender would cost ten times that much.

I must say though that Harmony remotes are beautiful and very well designed. I suspect that their programming interface is less intimidating to most people than JP1. I had actually considered buying a Harmony before I finally decided to give JP1 a try. Prior to that, I was using a URC-8910 (without JP1), which was great but was not doing quite everything I needed it to do.

--Nathan

 

[MarkHastings]

Yeah, I just wanted to make sure others (like Jim) knew because it kinds of sounded like only the JP1 was capable of doing those functions.

No hard feelings.

 

[Nathan Stohler]

Yep, no hard feelings. I just wanted to let people know that JP1 remotes are a good alternative for people who like to tinker. Both UEI and Harmony have their strong points. I have to say that the sweet display on the Harmony (and the ability to customize it) is very tempting.

One factor in choosing a remote is whether one prefers soft buttons (dynamic buttons like on the upper half of the Harmony remotes) which are always labelled correctly or hard buttons (like JP1 remotes) which don't have the flexibility of dynamic labels but are easier to navigate without actually looking at the remote.

--Nathan

 

[Mike Frezon]

Kumbayahhhhhhh...

 

[MarkHastings]

 

[BigJim]

My 880 arrived today. Can I get in on the group hug?

 

[Mike Frezon]

Crap. Everybody's got snazzy color screens...except me. :frowning:

 

[MarkHastings]

I'd say "time to upgrade", but that would mean you'd have 2 Harmony remotes, which would probably rip a hole in the space time continuum since the reason for getting one is to avoid having many remotes.

 

[Jim_C]

Thanks for the additional info. For me I push one button to cycle through the inputs on my Samsung. I'll have to see which method works for me.

Mike, I don't think you'll be alone with a non-snazzy screen. I'm going to order a 670 this week. I don't want to deal with the charger on the 880, which seems to still have issues. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on that.

 

[MarkHastings]

Mine makes a beeping sound when you put it in the charger. I don't know if they fixed the issue, but it doesn't seem to be an issue with me. I've only had it not connect to the charger once and I knew it wasn't connected because I didn't hear the beep.

 

[Alf S]

...and me...I just have the lowly 550 model.

 

[MarkHastings]

This thread is turning into a non-color LCD love fest. LOL

 

[Mike Frezon]

Kumbayahhhhhhh-again!

We won't let youse guys with the fancy color screens keep us down!

 

[BigJim]

The color screen on the 880 is nice, but I'm actually more impressed by the setup process. Yeah, it was somewhat tedious to have to plug the thing into a computer, and go through their steps designed to allow a complete moron to set up the remote, but I think it's a lot better than going through a series of 3-digit codes to attempt every different remote that your brand has put out in the last half-century to see which one is about 80% correct, then fix the other 20%.

Then, when it came to Activities (aka Macros), I was very impressed. It automatically programmed almost everything I wanted it to do without me having to go through the 'learn-the-macro' process. I'm very pleased.

I haven't even tried to customize individual buttons, but I may not have to because (so far) it seems to do everything I would want it to do. I'm extremely impressed with the setup.

One drawback, is that it takes quite a while to download the changes, so you need to make a list of everything you want to change, do it, then test it. It's very slow if you try to tweak one or two things at a time, then test, then go back and tweak again.

 

[BigJim]

Make that agonizingly slow. It downloads the update quickly, but the "verify" process takes at least 6 minutes, then after it rebooted, I though the system had locked up but it finally finished about 8 minutes after I started the update.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Jim: I hear ya.

But unless you are constantly swapping out gear so that you need to make changes to your remote set-up...you will come to realize that the minutes spent setting up the device will soon be a distant memory after the hours upon hours of convenience it provides.

 

[MarkHastings]

Yeah, updating the remote does take a lot longer than I wish it did, so I definitely do try to make a list of all the changes I want to do before updating.

It sucks at times when you want to test out some things. Once I got the remote where I wanted it (i.e. all the major changes) I was fooling around with minor stuff and the slow update was more annoying because I just wanted to update one thing, test it out, then go back and change it to something else. It was rough, waiting for that update every time.

 

[BigJim]

So that's actually normal? I thought maybe I had something wrong with my system. 10 minutes to update is ridiculous. Other than that, I love the Harmony 880, and my wife is happy with it too. Very easy to use, and to learn to use which is very important with a universal remote.

My only other complaint is that it's not taking my custom setup on the LCD buttons for my direcTivo. Not a huge deal, because it works fine for the Activity 'Watch Tivo', but if I switch from Activities to devices, I'm not able to customize the buttons. Strange. I'm 99% sure, I'm doing it right, because all my other changes are working, just not the custom buttons for the DirecTivo.