Most of us are fans of multiple component home theater systems. The problem is that if you want to be able to use all the functions of the devices, you need each individual oem remote at your finger tips. Sure you can get a simple universal remote that will do all the basics, turn on/off devices, change inputs, change volume, but you still need to hold on to you oem remotes in case you ever need to do some advanced features. I personally have a hdtv, denon a/v receiver, and a media center pc (I built it with a Zalman case). I have remotes for the tv and the media center, but the denon did not come with a remote (Amanda got it open box for me) so I needed to get one so I could perform the advanced functions. I was able to find the remote on ebay for ~60 dollars and figured it would be nice to just get a really good universal remote…

This is where the harmony 880 comes in to play. I found the remote on ebay for a little bit more than the denon remote that would only control my tv and receiver. I haven’t had the harmony for more than a couple hours now but I can already say that the remote is amazing. It has its normal layout of buttons, which can be customized (about 90% of them anyway) and then it has 8 soft keys (these are buttons that change function based on the text that is displayed next to them on an LCD screen). These soft keys are how this particular universal remote picks up the slack. If the button isn’t an actual hardware button on the remote, but was on the oem remote, it puts the button on the harmony as a soft key. For my denon I ended up with 90 functions that were put into the soft key area (that’s 12 pages of soft keys on the remote)! As far as I can tell, that covers everything that would have been on the oem remote.

Another thing that makes this remote so nice is that you don’t have to do the old tedious programming of the remote. You know what I’m talking about…flipping through pages and pages of codes and then trying them one at a time to see if it does in fact control the device you are trying to control. This remote connects to your computer with USB to program it. After you install the software and connect to the internet, just tell the software what kind of device, then the brand, and finally type in the model number and you are finished. It even automatically programs all the soft keys for you (we all know how lazy I am; I never would have entered 90 functions into the remote). Also, if a command you need isn’t in the online database, it has the ability to learn a command. Just point the oem remote at it, and press the button you need.

The thing just flat out works. It does take a while to get it set up correctly just because of all the advanced settings, but once it is set up correctly, you may ask yourself why you didn’t buy one of these babies sooner.

Oh yeah, did I mention it comes with a charging station. How sweet is that?!?!

Logitech Harmony 880