Remote control mayhem!
Posted by: dan scott on 16 January 2007
Hi everyone,
Well my current remote control count is nearing 10 and it's time to do something about it.
My commonly used remote control sources are-
AV2
Nait5i
CD5
Pioneer Plasma
Arcam DV79 DVD Player
Xbox (Used as a media player for video files)
Pioneer DVD Recorder
So I could get a Flash remote and that's definetly a strong candidate, I do like the remote supplied with the AV2 but others in the house don't get on with it too well. The attraction of the flash it that it shows you which component will be controlled ie. PRE/CD etc whereas with the normal remote you don't know which one your looking at.
Another option seems to be the Meridian sytem remote plus (MSR ) looks like a keyboard but is backlit, learns commands and is customisable. I've seen one member here say he/she was ordering one but there's not much else about it in non-meridian systems.
I'm not too keen on the logitech harmony series as i don't like the idea of an activity based system, i just want to select TV/AV2/DV79 etc and control it myself.
Posted on: 23 January 2007 by arf005
yeah, sorry Dan for jumping on your thread.....
nap-ster, shame you can't justify the 7 or 805's as they'd be an excellent match, but I know what you mean, I probably couldn't do it myself either!!
Just had a look on B&W's website (not that I didn't believe you) and stumbled across the Custom Theatre 800 series (
here)...didn't know they were making those!! Guess I've not looked in a while though after making our minds up - on our stereo system for the lounge....
Going back to the 601's though, and although I don't do it myself, I often see that series of speaker on ebay if you are so inclined.....could be worth a look......
I'm curious how local you are to us, punt me an e mail if you wish at arf005@hotmail.com
Cheers,
Ali
Posted on: 24 January 2007 by arf005
Posted on: 24 January 2007 by dan scott
OK then, I've got the Harmony 885 and had an "interesting" evening with it.
First setup attempt went miserably wrong and nothing worked (Does it ever first time) and so about 2 hours in I re-flashed the firmware on the remote and deleted all activities and devices on the harmony software.
With my now "factory-fresh" harmony I set about rebuilding. Adding everything 1 device at a time then rebooting the remote and testing how the device works as just a one for all remote (ie. no activities) things started looking up!
I adjusted the turn on times for some of my devices as the database times were a bit unrealistic (I wish my Plasma could be ready to accept commands in 3 second after power on but that's just not gonna happen!)
Next I crafted a few basic activities - Watch TV, watch DVD, listen to CD and listen to MP3 (Airport Express) Things started to pull together quite nicely. The activities needed some tweaking and manual command adding for changing the AV2 inputs as the script the activity wizard compiled didn't do everything but it does work.
Few gripes with the unit so far though:-
1) The volume control is pretty shoddy as the remote gets a bit jammed up with commands if you puch the volume button a lot it bottlenecks and keeps sending volume commands out for ages. Net result being that it's much easier to reach for the Naim remote and do it that way.
2) This is just an aesthetic one and not really that important (But I'm a fussy git!) the screen is pretty shoddy especially by modern standards with mobile phone screens being the quality they are. Logitech could of done a better job i'm sure.
3) Sometimes things don't turn on..... eg. if everything if off and I run 'Watch a DVD' on comes the plasma then the AV2 goes over to DVD (CO1 input FYI) the Nait5i goes to AV (For the front 2 channels) but the DVD player doesn't come on... Now this is easily sorted by pushing help and answering a few questions but it's annoying! (Also my girlfriend won't do the help button bit I know she would just reach for the DVD player remote)
4) My Plasma has independant inputs for every source, except 1... the integrated tuner, the DTV button also doubles up as a TV button so say for instance i'm on input 4 (HDMI for the DVD player) and I push the DTV/TV button the plasma will switch to freeview, if I push that button again it will switch to the analogue tuner which I don't use obviously.
The problem the harmony faces is that I set 'Watch TV' to be-
1) Plasma On
2) AV2 to 'TV' input(OP2)
3) Nait5i to 'AV' (For the front 2 channels from the AV2)
4) (Here's the problem) Plasma to DTV input
if the plasma was already on DTV input when it went off then sometimes (Only sometimes) the harmony will set it onto analogue tv as it will send the DTV/TV button command through and it will change freeview to analogue TV. The fact that it only happens sometimes probably means that the timings are a bit funny on the activity and so the command only sometimes gets through. Press help and the first thing it does it send the DTV/TV command again putting it onto the freeview so it must be an issue that Logitech are aware of.
I know that's not the Harmony's fault, more my TV's fault but still it's annoying. If I got an external PVR/Freeview tuner it would be fine but it would be annoying to buy something i've already got just to fit round a remote control.
Will I send it back or keep it? Tonight will tell as i'll play around a bit more and see what my feelings are...
Any help and advise kindly appreciated!
Thanks
Dan
Posted on: 24 January 2007 by nap-ster
Posted on: 24 January 2007 by arf005
Thought you might say that......
Posted on: 25 January 2007 by Roy Donaldson
Sorry, got to say that the Home Theatre Master things are just more configurable from a custom point of view.
Helps you get around a lot of these issues.
I have a section on my MX-700 that is called Power. If something doesn't come on correctly, then you hit that and then the button of the device you need to fix. Done.
Roy.
Posted on: 25 January 2007 by garyi
to be fair, you can adjust the buttons within activities, so for instance if your TV frequently does not turn on then you can set one of the buttons to be power once in activities.
However you are back to that 'guess the button' thing.
This is what frustrates me about the harmony, basically you need the other remotes around just in case. Which is not a good indicator.
