Thanks, Bruno. I think I'll skip it and make sure my clients aren't going with that brand/model in the future.

What bluray players are recommended these days?

I think what frustrates me so much about remote control codes and the whole universal space is that it really seems to me like everything doesn't HAVE to be so complicated. There are better ways to do these things, and we certainly have the technology, but no improvements have been made. All we have instead are fancy ways to deal with the needlessly complicated mess.

Sony Playstation 3.

I'm serious. It is a perfectly good blu-ray player, provided you get one of several available adapters that lets you use an infrared remote with it. It has great 1080p HDMI output, and digital optical output in several selectable bitstream formats as well. Because, as a current-gen gaming system, it's meant to be internet-connected at all times, it can do the Blu-ray thing of getting updates from the internet. For example, there was a new standard for 3D blu-ray that came out in April 2010, and an OS update for the PS3 made it compatible with that standard. There's also an upcoming standard for higher capacity blu-ray discs that supposedly will also be supported by the PS3 via an upgrade. (cite)

Its price is very similar to stand-alone BD players, but with this one you can play Little Big Planet and the Uncharted series on it.

Okay, I knew that was coming While I have no doubt the PS3 is still one of - if not the - best bluray players around. But that's a hard sell to a client.

Besides, while it's in the price range of some bluray players, there are plenty of internet-connected models out there - including from Sony - for $100 less. Plus, I'd need to get one of those IR adapters in order to get it to work with a universal remote anyway

But in principal, I agree with you. I'd go with a PS3 if I were in the right situation. Personally, I went with the Sony Google TV bluray player, and it actually works really, really well...

For quality, I see Oppo is highly recommended, though I have no experience with them myself. It's what I would buy if I was in the market however. Or a PS3 for the reasons Tony mentioned. Can't really go wrong at $250 (tops) for a PS3. The IR adapters at $100 are a little pricy though.

Sorry to bring the thread back up. I have a question for the Harmony users here:

I'm starting to get a number of clients that really like their smart TVs (for some reason). How does Harmony interact with these sets?

I'm very experienced with the Harmony line, but don't have a Smart TV. However, I'd expect it's the same as setting up the Harmony for any multimedia device like a streamer. You'll get an assortment of commands to do pretty much everything that's on the original remote, minus of course things that may be handled by proprietary RF or Bluetooth, such as mouse and keyboard functions.

I wouldn't anticipate any problems setting up a Harmony for any of the current TVs, with the caveat that the owner may need to use the original remote as a keyboard if so-equipped and required.

No, no bluetooth or RF (I would figure those would be out), and the original remote has no particularly unusual buttons, aside from the button that brings up the TV's "smart" features like its built in apps.

I guess I'm asking if it's possible to make a custom macro to get it to control this stuff in the TV.

Also, I had a client ask me about a possible Harmony remote with a keyboard built in. I told him I hadn't heard of such a product, and I can't seem to find any mention of one, but have you heard of it? I wouldn't be surprised if he was confusing it with some other remote, but I thought I'd ask...

Harmony macros are kinda lame; they can only be something like five commands long, and you can't chain them.

The cheater way to make a Harmony Macro is to make it on another remote and then learn it with the Harmony. The Logitech software and remotes themselves don't have custom macros - at least not in any version I've ever used.

Logitech will be releasing a remote with a keyboard this year. It's been leaked on a few sites. Model 800. For keyboard it uses Logitech's unified receiver - it also has a touch screen which can be used as a trackpad. It's a kind of square-ish looking thing with a somewhat ugly keyboard. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1398964

Unfortunately it looks like the remote side of things may be a bit weak though. Not many specialised buttons for various functions e.g. the red, yellow, blue, green buttons are used by my cable TV PVR. Custom ones on the LCD are clunky.

Even my old Harmony 785 is sometimes a bit short on buttons. Fortunately it has six soft buttons to a page compared with the new ones which seem to be going to 3.

Also I have a smart TV and I have the special QWERTY remote. I rarely use the smart stuff at all - I just use my laptop. It's not quite there for me. A bit slow and I will have TV on whilst using the laptop frequently. I guess most here would use their laptop or tablet for a lot of smart TV functionality.

Harmony remote generally have crap layouts, that's for sure. Dedicated page buttons? Ridiculous.

But having dedicated color buttons is generally lame as well today, since they were originally for teletext. Now used by some cable companies, the will usually have a specific functionality attached to them, that might be better implemented on another button. EDIT: Or functionality that can be achieved through on-screen navigation/UI (as is the case for some Sky features)

It's a shame that they're used at all since they're a usability nightmare - colorblindness, no indication of function, etc.

But lack of the colored buttons is the least of the concerns with that fugly Harmony.



The only correct way to do smart TV is with IP control, so you can use the tools you mentioned above.

The coloured buttons are vital in the UK. The Sky satellite boxes use the coloured buttons are various places in the programme guide.

You really can't use the PVR functionality without them and what the buttons do depends entirely on context. So there would be no way of tying the functionality to anything other than a set of four coloured buttons.

Crap, but true.

On the plus side, the native Sky remote is the best designed remote I've ever handled. It has such a well chosen layout and variety of button sizes/shapes. So much better than the average remote.

Agreed, it really is good

You can always use the redundant (to SKY) buttons, SKIP, REPLAY, PAGE_UP and PAGE_DOWN as the colored buttons on a universal that has them (all Harmony models):

I don't need to, my Harmony remote has the four coloured buttons. My point was that having the coloured would be completely unworkable in the case of controlling a UK Sky box.

You'd need a cheat sheet of some sort, telling you which colour or function mapped to which button depending on which screen you were in !

I guess you didn't look at the image I linked. I'll edit the post to show it inline if possible. The owner of the remote actually applied some paint to his Harmony One.

I saw the image, I saw the red and blue buttons, I saw what I thought was a odd reflection (the yellow button), I didn't see a green button. I guess you can sum that up as, I failed...

My best guess is that he posted the picture before painting the green one under the yellow. The image was linked in a forum where the author was discussing re-purposing those buttons and the little paint mod.

Planning such a remote is a delicate balance and the worst thing to do is add more buttons to try and cover absolutely every permutation of every device. With the Harmony, they include a number of buttons which are themselves niche at best, such as the page Up/Down, so it makes some sense to re-purpose those first. I mean, I can't recall seeing a device that didn't use the channel buttons for page_up and down where appropriate, making the dedicated buttons completely superfluous in 99.9% of setups.

With their latest keyboard remote it doesn't look like much planning went into it honestly. It looks really slapped together and uncomfortable. I'm sure it will del into the millions though because Logitech has that ability with almost anything. Revue excepted

I have. Satellite tuners occasionally use them to skip pages at a time in the channel list.

I've also seen it several times. That said, I agree that it's stupid.

Sure, I've seen that too. But on every box I've ever used, DIshNetwork/Bell/Echostar (4 different models) plus Starchoice (Scientific Atlanta and Motorola) and DirecTV, the Channel UP/DOWN buttons also did the same thing.