Bringing Harmony To My Home Theater

Logitech Harmony 550

So if you can put it past yourself to ignore the extremely cheesy title of this post, you’ll probably find this post useful.  Like many, I’ve heard of universal remotes before.  I mean, I’m a geek, so I must have, right?  Well, little did I know that one of the technology companies I hate the most, Logitech, makes some of the nicest universal remotes on the market, at least, according to Engadget and Gizmodo.  For Christmas this year, I got my family a 46″ Sony Bravia TV, a Blu-Ray player, and a Home Theater system.  Including the cable remote, that’s four remotes.  What a nightmare!  Ugh, it was horrible; we needed to find a solution.  The Bravia SYNC technology that Sony includes with most of its newer equipment was a good start, but it still wasn’t cutting it.  As I mentioned earlier, Engadget and Gizmodo recommended the Logitech Harmony series.  So, last night, I started doing some research.  I found that the Logitech Harmony 550 suited our needs rather well.  It was 76 dollars on Amazon.  That’s not too shabby.  However, in my never ending quest to find the cheapest price of an item, I discovered that Best Buy had the remote for about 42 dollars.  A 130 dollar (retail price) remote for 42 dollars?  GREAT.  The only issue was that the only store in the area that had any left was the one in the waterfront.  So, I picked one up today, and as the title of the post says, all our woes are gone.  The remote is beautiful, and it honestly took about 15 minutes to set up.  The software is friendly and easy to use, and it already had all of our devices pre-programmed, which was a huge plus.  What’s great about this remote is that you can set up a sequence of events to occur, or “Activities.”  For example, I made two activities, “Watch TV”, and “Watch A Blu-Ray”.  When we pick “Watch TV,” the cable box turns on, and so does the TV.  The volume controls the TV volume, and all is well.  Whenever we pick “Watch A Blu-Ray”, the cable box shuts off, the TV switches to HDMI 3, the sound system turns on, and so does the blu-ray player.  Then, when in that activity, the volume now controls the sound system, rather than the inactive TV speakers.  Amazing.  Simply amazing.  The remote knows which devices are on, too, so when switching back to “Watch TV,” it shuts off the blu-ray player and the sound system, turns the cable box back on, and simply switches the TV input back, rather than trying to turn it on again.  I honestly must say that this was probably the best 40 dollars I’ve ever spent in my life, and I highly recommend Logitech’s Harmony series of remotes to anyone who’s looking to simplify their current remote fiasco.