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The Sony RM-VL900 has been the hidden gem in the world of universal remote controls for many years. It has learning capabilites (for those unaware, a learning remote is one that you can put head-to-head against your existing device's remote, press the button on the learning remote that you want to learn, then press the button on your existing remote that you want to learn from. The learning remote reads your existing remote's IR signal and duplicates it- you never have to deal with device codes and such). The Sony also has 3 macro buttons - a button that can perform multiple functions.

My home entertainment system consists of the following:

• Toshiba 27" flat panel CRT TV
• Philips DVP-642 DVD player ($70 dvd player that plays DivX cds/dvds. w00t!)
• Sony 5.1 dolby receiver
• Hughes HDVR2 DirecTV TiVo (the only tivo with 2 tuners!)

I have my Sony macros configured to do the following:
Button 1: Power. This sends the 'power' signal to both my TV and my receiver, turning them both either on or off.
Button 2: Switch from TiVo/TV mode into 'Watch a DVD' mode. This sends the TV/VIDEO signal to my TV 4 times, sends a power signal to my DVD player, sends a 'DVD Input' signal to my receiver, then puts the remote in DVD mode so that when I press play, it sends the play signal to the DVD player instead of the TiVo.
Button 3: Return to TiVo/TV from DVD playing mode. Much the opposite of button 2. You get the picture.

It seems that there have not been many innovations in the world of remote controls over the years. The Philips 'Pronto' has a touch screen, which seems ridiculous - you should not have to look at a remote to operate it. The buttons need to be there, easily identifiable by feel.

Along came the Harmony. I had first heard of the Harmony from A/V geek friends. It was generally not available in stores/online- only through high end A/V 'solutions' providers. It was made by Intrigue Technologies who was recently acquired by Logitech.

I've got a friends that really love their Harmony. While I've said that you could not pry my RM-VL900 out of my cold dead hands, I can certainly appreciate innovation and new technology, so I decided to give it a shot. I bought the best model they offer (890) on eBay for around $285 shipped, significantly less than the $500MSRP.

Just reading about it, I was excited about the following features:

• It's RF! It comes with an RF/IR transmitter that you place in front of the devices. The remote communicates with it over radio frequency, which means that you do not have to point the remote at the devices. The devices can even be inside a cabinet, completely hidden. Of course, the remote will also transmit via regular IR as well.
• Color LCD for device selection. I'm a geek. This is cool.
• Auto-programming: It's got software that you enter your device model numbers into and it'll auto program the remote over your USB port.
• Rechargable battery with charging cradle. No more replacing batteries.
• Backlit buttons and motion sensor. When you pick up the remote, it'll start glowing.

I received the remote about 24 hours ago. I removed it from the box: remote, battery, charging cradle, RF receiver, software CD, and very small installation booklet. I put the remote in the charger and installed the software. Ooooooh the software. You'll see plenty of bitching about the software on message boards... as well as here in this review. Rather than a client-side application that just downloads any updated information from the internet, the software is just a very small application that allows the remote to communicate with the Logitech web page. That's right, the configuration software is completely web based. When you click on the icon, it launches a small browser window that you must login to, bringing you into the configuration screen. This web page is SLOW. Yesterday evening, I had to wait 1+ minute between clicks. Absolutely and completely unacceptable. I understand the web site was completely unresponsive for the entire week after Christmas this past year.

I typed in my device model numbers and went through the setup. One pet peeve is that even though I first chose to use the remote's IR to control all of of my devices instead of the RF/IR receiver, I would still have to plug the USB cable into the RF/IR receiver every single time I wanted to make a configuration cange on the remote.

After setup had completed, it had already populated my 'activities' - "Watch TiVo", "Watch a DVD", etc. Neat. Based on my TV model number, the remote knew that by sending the TV/VIDEO command to the TV, it would be scrolling through TV, Video1, Video2, Video3, and Color Stream. It 'remembers' which one of these inputs the TV was last set to and will always send the right combination of key presses to change activities. Very cool.



Two things didn't work perfectly and had to be tweaked:

• When switching from TiVo mode to watching a DVD mode, the TV didn't end up on the right input. The problem here is that the TV is slow to respond to commands, and the Harmony was sending them too fast. I had experienced the same when setting up my Sony, so I knew what I had to do: increase the inter-key delay. This setting was fairly easy to find in the Harmony configuration software.
• When scrolling through things on my TiVo, it took roughly twice as long for the tivo to respond to the commands compared to my Sony. I changed all of the delays to 0ms, and it didn't fix anything. The TiVo has an LED on the front that changes color when it is receiving an IR command. This LED gave me the answer I to my probem: The Sony was sending much shorter commands. The Harmony would send out the signal for too long. This configuration change in the software was extremely difficult to find. I had to search the Harmony forum over at RemoteCentral.com to figure it out. It's buried in the troubleshooting a few menus deep, and even when you find it, it's not obvious what you're changing. "If your device is not receiving all of the commands correctly, change this setting:" (or something like that) and you can choose from radio boxes 0,1,2,3,4 or 5. Default was 3, I changed it to 1 and all was well. You're essentially changing the repeat rate.

When the first problem occured for the first time, I pressed the HELP button on the remote. This is a great feature - it'll ask you questions on the LCD as it sends out appropriate IR commands: "Is the TV on? yes/no. Is the TV on the right input? yes/no (sends out tv/video command) Did that fix the problem? yes/no."

Next I wanted to program the list of softkeys that appeared when I was watching the tivo. I wanted to change the word "List" to "Now Showing" to match the verbiage that the TiVo uses, and I wanted to add a "To Do" button - which brings up a list of things that the tivo plans on recording. This is accomplished by pressing the tivo button followed by the number 2.

First of all, the list of softkeys under tivo on the software did not initially match the LCD. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out where to program these settings before finally searching the RemoteCentral.com forums again and found a post that told me that the screen in the software does not match what's on the remote until you change the settings.

This is when I discovered that the remote does not have real macro cabilities. You can assign a soft key to press UP TO and ONLY ONE button on each device. In other words, I could have a soft key press a button on my tivo and then on my receiver and then on my DVD player, but I could not make it press two buttons on the tivo. Ridiculous! By reading remotecenral.com some more, I found a work-around: add a second identical device into your device list. This way, you're pressing the second key on another device (even though it is identical). I did just this: I added a tivo #2. I then assigned the soft key to press the Tivo button on tivo #1 and then the number 2 button on Tivo #2.

Finally it was programmed the way I wanted. It certainly look more time than my Sony, partially due to the slowness of the web site, and partially due to me having to search the RemoteCentral.com forum for answers to my programming questions. Although the manual for the Sony isn't perfect, I never had to search the 'net to make anything work.

Now.. time to use this thing. It's certainly an attractive device. When I placed it in my hand, my thumb naturally rested on the 5-way directional switches. Now, I'm going to make a big assumption here, but if you own a Harmony remote, you probably have a PVR/DVR/TiVo of some sort. Therefore, you'll be pressing play/pause/rew/fwd buttons a lot. In order to press the play or pause buttons, I have to bend my thumb down into a very uncomfortable position. Why can't the play button be a button in the middle of the remote somewhere? On the right side of a 4-across 2-high button cluster is simply a poor position for it. Even if the button labels were completely worn off of my Sony, I'd be willing to bet that you could guess which button was play. You could never do that with the Harmony. The 5-way, channel, and volume button placement is fine - it's all the others (on the bottom half of the remote) I have an issue with.

When I'm watching TV, the remote often sits on the couch cusion next to me or on the arm rest next to me. If I want to perform a single command, I reach over and press a button. I reached over to press the mute button on the Harmony and.... nothing happened. Why? It appears as though the IR transmitters are angled DOWN. Theoretically, I understand that this is because Logitech expects you to have the remote in your hand - tilted up so you can see the LCD - when you press the buttons. Realisitically, this isn't always the case. They need to either install more IR transmitters facing forward or modify the existing design. This bugs me. A lot.

No problem, I thought: I'll just configure the RF/IR receiver to send out the commands. That way, I can have the remote in any position and it'll work fine. I logged into the configuration software (web page) and changed all of my devices to be controlled by RF. I placed one little IR transmitter in front of each device's IR receiver (the harmony comes with 8 of them), and plugged them into the RF receiver. Once I plugged both the RF receiver and the remote into the USB cable for reprogramming, I was set. ...or so I thought. RF performance is simply horrendous. I held down the "volume up" button and I watched the volume count on my receiver go up: "14.......15.......16.......17....18...19.20.21.22.23" - very erratic. I would bring up the tivo menu and press "down" a few times (say, 1/2 second between each press). It wouldn't respond at all for a number of seconds, then it'd get a flood of responses. Back to IR!

The biggest advantage to the Harmony is that you can give it to a house guest and they'll have everything figured out immediately. With the Sony, I have to tell people to press macro 1 to turn everything on or off... and you press the DISPLAY button to bring up the tivo menu. A second advantage is its ability to duplicate every function of your devices. If I want to turn on subtitles on a DVD I'm watching, I have to find my DVD player's remote control. On the Harmony, I can press the device button, then DVD player, then scroll through the soft key screens (for my DVD player, there are 5) until you find Subtitles. However, I actually think it'd be faster for me to grab the DVD remote, assuming it's on top of the DVD player where it should be.. than to go through all the menus on the Harmony.

Conclusion:
Even though the Harmony's computer/online total programming time may take longer, I suspect it'll be less intimidating for the average user than going through learning other remotes (which the Harmony can also do, by the way). The fact that anyone can pick it up and control your devices is also a huge advantage for the average user (or in a household with more than 2 individuals). In the end, I've been using this Sony for ~5 years, and the Harmony isn't enough to make me switch. The Sony feels better in my hand, has better button placement, and has the ability to operate my devices while parallel to the floor :). Harmony offers a number of models - one down from this 890 is the 880, which I believe is identical but does not include the RF capabilities. You can save ~$50(street) by leaving this useless feature out.

The Sony RM-VL900 can be found for $30. It's the best $30 you'll ever spend.

After <24 hours, my 890 is going up on eBay.

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You can do an image slideslow, how cuuuuute.