I just bought a Harmony 628 universal remote control. Somewhat puzzlingly, I can’t find a page on Logitech’s website about it, but it looks very similar to the Harmony 659 model.

Since Logitech bought the manufacturer of the Harmony remotes, they certainly have taken full advantage of Logitech’s extensive distribution channel. These very powerful remote controls are now very easy to find. I got mine at Costco for CDN$128.

I’ve just finished setting it up for the first time to control my Sony TV, Panasonic DVD/VCR combo, and Scientific Atlanta digital cable box. It went pretty smoothly. I had to teach it a new command, the Antenna button on my TV remote, because of the weird way I have the system hooked up right now. Teaching the command worked fine, once I looked more closely at the picture in the configuration web-app, and realized that the IR learning sensor is on the butt-end of the remote, not the head.

I also had trouble at first with the LCD display being extremely faint. No contrast at all. Then the contrast was flickering for a while, but now it seems to have stabilized at a pretty decent contrast level. Not sure what was going on with that. It’s a little bit worrying.

But I’m pretty impressed by this remote so far. Somehow, even if I mess with the current input selection on the TV manually, the Harmony is somehow mysteriously able to get the input changed properly for whichever activity I select. I have no idea how they do that. The only thing I can think of is that maybe they have a sensor that looks at light-output from the TV screen to detect when the TV has cycled around to the right input. Or maybe the TV understands some other “absolute” input-selection IR codes that the included remote doesn’t send.

My Mom is coming to visit this Easter weekend. That will be the acid test of usability of this remote. If she can operate the thing without calling me over every three minutes, it will be truly a triumph of simple interface design.