It's all getting too much for the wife now that we have around 7 remotes in the loungeroom for "all of my toys" as she puts it.

I'd love to know what everyone else is using to control all of their toys. I'm aware of the Harmony and Pronto series but want to hear from real people rather than potentially biased media reviews. Please share your experiences.

If you search the Haromy 525, you'll see any number of glowing reports from owners of a wide range of gear. I'm using one with a Shuab Lorenz TV (not quite perfect), a Teac PVR and an LG DVD/VCR, both of which work perfectly. The one challenge your wife may raise is the need to remember to tell the remote which device you're wanting to control before hitting the command. They sometimes forget and wonder why the Volume+ button isn't doing anything.
The 525 is currently on sale at DSE for $77, which everyone will agree is a bargain.
Hope that helps.

Sounds like you don't have the activities set up correctly. if set up correctly, when you select the "DVD" activity it might control the AV receiver volume but if you're only running the "TV" activity it will only change the TV volume. That's the whole point of the Harmony remotes. They combine multiple devices on to one activity

I'm using a Harmony 785 - or rather the missus is using it. Since I bought the harmony I don't get to watch TV much anymore as the wife now finds she can use everything so much more easily.

I use the remote to control a Panasonic CRT TV, Yamaha 2700 AVR, Toshiba DVD recorder, Foxtel iQ, beyonwiz PVR and a VCR so old the name has worn off. Can't fault it - and because it is rechargeable we never have to fumble around changing batteries like the other remotes.

It literally has removed the need to use the other 6 remotes for - the only time we ever use one of the original remotes is to access one of the more esoteric functions on the AVR (eg the setup parameters or to change a sound field program). You can do these things with the harmony but because they are little used functions they get buried three levels into the harmony menu - on the yamaha remote they are accessed with one button press (one you know which of the 600 buttons to press).

Harmony have a great interactive set up wizard.

No having said all that - you should search "Harmony" and "Pronto" and "universal remote" - plenty of material on here already.

Hey Spike, I have a Logitech Harmony 525.

I bought the Harmony after getting sick of having just 3 remotes to shuffle controlling 4 pieces of kit. The reason I chose Harmony was because they were relatively cheap. Even cheaper nowadays (from ~$75). I base my comments on the 520/525 models as these are very similar (with the 360 being closely related).

BUTTONS:
The buttons on the Harmony are mostly soft rubber with symbols printed on so they will wear off after much use. There are a couple of hard plastic buttons on and around the central navigation control. The feeling you get when you press the buttons isn't one of quality, and they produce a creaky/clicky sound when depressed.
The layout again on the 525 is OK, though placement of the coloured keys on the bottom is a negative in my view because some of my gear uses these in various menus (BW PVR, Panasonic Plasma). The better placement is in the middle similar to the 360 and 785.

LCD SCREEN
The 525 supports 4 "soft" buttons per page on the LCD and the screen is not colour. The 785 has a colour screen which supports 6 "soft" keys per page as well as icons eg favourite channel logos for Foxtel
You can assign just about any command to any button, and if the hard button is not present on the Harmony, you can virtuailise it on the LCD screen. You can also reorder/delete commands on the LCD so you only have the most often used commands on the LCD, but if you want to have them all there, you can have pages and pages of commands.

BATTERY LIFE:
The 525 uses standard AA batteries which last about 4 months at a time. I use rechargeables which last about 3 months between charges. The higher end models use a rechargeable battery and come supplied with a recharger cradle.

SOFTWARE/DATABASE:
The Harmony software is getting easier to use each time they upgrade it, but, it can be daunting for new comers and a little confusing. Once you get a small understanding of the principle of how the remotes work, then it becomes all the more easy to setup. You can add numerous devices to your setup, and not necessarily AV gear either....heaters, ACs, lights, blinds, cameras...basically anything with an IR remote. Of all my gear, I have found that the default setting for the device supports about 95% of the commands of the original remote, so usually, there's a couple that I have had to learn using the learning port...very easy to use.
There's also some support for discrete codes, so changing inputs, the Harmony can go direct to that input rather than cycling through a menu.
If upgrading models, the database can replicate your settings from your previous Harmony remote to the new one, so you don't have to set it all up again.

MACROS:
The ability to create macros to control various equipment for each activity and keep a track of what's on and what's not when switching activities is a big plus for the Harmony. I presume the Prontos do this as well but I have no experience with them.
Once you set up your activities, you should not need to go into "Device" mode again, except for a command you don't often use. By keeping things in an "Activity", the devices stay in sync and the remote knows what devices are on/off and which inputs are being used. If you happen to get out of sync, a couple of presses of the "Help" key and things will be back in sync again.
You can also run "sequences" (mini single button macros) which contain up to 6 commands from a press of one key. EG you could programme in 0,7,0 into the "7" key so that when you press "7" while watching TV, it changes the channel to 7HD.

SUPPORT:
Logitech's support line is very good, 7 days a week from memory, both phone or email, but phone is much better and quicker turnaround.
What the Harmony won't do is control a PS3 (it uses bluetooth technology) and RF controlled equipment, unless you import US RF models.

BUILD QUALITY:
The general build quality is fair, and mine is going strong after several drops from ~1m height onto a wooden floor by the kids. By all accounts the Harmony's are not as robust as the Prontos, but for a starting price of $99.95 RRP, and the functionality they provide, I would buy another one in a heartbeat again.

CONCLUSION:
Like anything I guess it's not perfect, but in summary, it's cheap and it's made our life a hell of a lot easier and enables us to use our gear more often because it simplifies things. The 5yo kids and Mrs diesel can use it and would be lost without it. Regardless of which brand/model you buy, as long as it can handle macros, it'll allow the Mrs to take back control of the living room and TV which...isn't such a good thing now that I come to think about it.....just kidding . Get one, you won't regret it.

I'm liking the sound of the Harmony 785, what's the best price on these today?

I'm seeing them for $175 delivered from eBay buy-it-now, is this overs at all?

What about the Harmony 1, is it worth it over the 785? Just seems like they added a touch screen?

I picked up a Harmony 525 about 5 months ago and am loving it so far. I went for the 525 because it’s cheap and I wasn’t totally sold on the idea of a universal remote so I didn’t want to spend too much on something I wasn’t sure I would use. Now I am seriously considering picking up a second one for our other entertainment area, I'm tempted to go for the 785 this time, it really is hard to imagine going back to swapping around 4 or 5 remotes.
I second basically everything that was said in the posts above, the 525 doesn’t look or feel all that impressive but it is fairly well build and will withstand the usual knocks a remote takes. The initial set-up can be a bit daunting at first but once you get a feel for it, it becomes quite simple and you will soon be configuring it to work exactly as you want.

I've had the 785 for probably 12 months and it's generally great - some of the gripes can be found in the 785 thread. $189 seems a great price too - I paid $234.

Re. the one, there's a thread on it too, well worth reading. To me, it doesn't seems to be a big advance on the 785...

Kent

+1 Harmony

Ive been using an 880 now for years, couldnt live without it!

Pronto TSU2000 - can't live without it

The Home Theatre Master MX-500 works very well for me.

Looks like current models on offer from this company (www.universalremote.com) are all RF remotes, where as the MX is IR.

Not sure if RF works for your set up, but IMO, the MX is a good product.

Mick

Another thumbs up for the 525 here. Agree with everything mentioned above and highly recommended. But two minor negatives besides the creakiness are:
1. poor legibility of the silver buttons with backlighting during the day
2. The standard grid layout and same shape buttons means common PVR presses like "guide" "exit" etc are not sub conscious and automatic like my previous remote.
But thats getting pretty picky and are not reasons to avoid it. We actually use the various AV equipment more now because it's not a hassle to turn things on/off and set the correct input every time you want to switch activity.

Harmony icing on the PVR cake: I've set up a macro so the PVR skips 4 minutes of ads with one button press. Then I skip back or forward 10 or 20 sec with another press to find the end of the ads if I need to.

I might have to give that a go for skipping ads on the BW

What a stunningly useful and simple idea. My biggest gripe about the wiz is the fixed 15 sec skip. I didn't even think about using the harmony to overcome that. Hats off to kas!

Im using a URC Complete Control MX-810 with RF-IR BaseStation for my Lounge HT and a Harmony XBox360 Edition for the Family/Games Room.

I've owned the Harmony 785, URC Home Theater Master MX-500 & MX-850 Aeros remotes in the past too.

Imo URC make the best Universal Remotes on the planet, they are solidly constructed, have great tactile feedback and range from "not difficult" to program down to "easier to program than a Harmony".

Glad I could make a small contribution.

I must be a bit too dumb for a URC remote. An MX-500 was tried for a while then retired to the drawer. Even though I got a few macros programmed for 5 devices, it was too easy for others to 'de-synch' the macros and end up totally confused. Bought a cheap and simple 525 and it's truly marvelous. Most of the programming falls in place and missing codes were fairly easy to find (under another name) or learnt. The MX-500 was sturdy enough to fend off burglars, however, though the 525 might be a bit frail, it has lasted a year or two so far without anything breaking. The Activities and Help buttons means it has a better WAF than most other remote brands. Certainly beats the MX-500 in my opinion.

These threads often show that it's dif strokes for dif folks, and that there are multiple good products in the market, thankfully.

What they also show is that it usually takes more than one try to find what you really need to make your home set up great.

I was the opposite to Wing Nut, I tried the 525, and returned it as it didn't suit me.

Glad we both found the right device for our differing needs.

Mick

Harmony 785 and very happy with it.

Yeah the non PC programmable URC were a decent challenge to program, I could never go back to one myself.

I used to have a Pronto but moved away from it to Home Theatre Master and now have 3 in the house + have just finished setting up a friend's system with one also,

They are great to program but do require patience to get the macros working as best as you want ergonomically. That is not a reflection on the HTM being difficult to program, they are not, but a reflection on how carefully the user needs to plan ahead to make the remote do things most efficiently.

We use two MX-700's and an MX-800 in our three systems and have evolved ome neat tricks which I'll pass on here as they could interest other owners.

Until recently I did not realise you could put macros on the "OFF" button so now have that button setup so pressing it turns everything off and reverts the remote to the MAIN starting screen, But of course you often wish to move from using one item to another so I've installed a CHANG screen. This only turns off the item being used and takes you to a CHANG screen. From this screen you can choose another item to use and macros turn the selected item on and do the appropriate switching then take you to the screen for that item. But on the CHANG screen I have a VID+- button so you can power off, or on, the video display. Handy if you are moving from a video use to an audio only use or vice versa.

The trickiest part in programming the HTM (and I guess others also) is allowing the correct time intervals between codes so an item is switched on and given enough time to warm up ready for receiving the next instruction.

I programmed my friends MX-700 (purchased relatively cheaply off e-bay O/S BTW) so with the VCR, PVR and TV he has the option of listening to all audio through the Pioneer TV OR of using the receiver and associated speakers for more expansive sound. He likes that option so he can use those units quietly at night and not disturb his wife as he is a bit of a night owl and she is not. I programmed the remote so he can move from using the main system or not using it regarless of what he started out with. The tricky part of this was to allow sufficient time for the receiver to warm up before sending the appropriate switching code.

Yes, when looking for the second remote for a system at home I did consider the MX-500 but could see it was not as easy to set up as the MX-700 so avoided it. If you have an MX-500 well set up to do what you want then fine, I'm not trying to sling mud at it, but beware that even within a certain brand, not all models are necessarily closely similar. I guess that same comment could apply to Harmony which is a lot less expensive than the HTM series and could be just as effective. I really do not know as have no personal experience with them. Being mentally lazy, once I had got the hang of programming the HTM, stuck with that breed.

Bottom line is that no system with 3 or more remotes should be without a programmable remote. The main system at home would require more than 15 remotes and the HTM 700 replaces all but one. I could program the 700 for that one (for the Sony projector) also but in practice find it better to leave it out as codes for the projector need to be pointed at it while all other gear is at the side in a different direction.

And another little switcher board I installed recently has been very handy to implement. It is a 12 station switching board and has a couple of excellent codes which turn everything off on the board. This has made integration of some power switching and screen switching a lot easier to manage. Even my (very) non technical wife can operate this crazy system using the HTM-700.

I guess all this should be on the HT board but it probably does not matter because most of you lurk at both places.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

John