Last weekend, the old faithfull Philips Pronto RU950 programmable remote decided to go to meet its maker. One of the kids had managed to dent the touchscreen, meaning the resitive layers were permanently touching, so a new screen is needed. Okay, not a big problem, until Philips tell you that they have none in stock and MAY be making some in January next year if there is demand, otherwise they will wait. Not much good for an AV system having to wait four months plus...
So, after a friendly visit back to Sevenoaks Sound and Vision who built the system for me in the first place, I emerged the proud owner of a new Logitech Harmony 1100 programmable remote. Now, I could have had the latest Philips but I could not see the need to spend £800 on a remote control.
Having had the Logitech for a few days, I can honestly say it is pretty good. It is chalk and cheese compared to the Pronto to program, in the the Pronto allows a huge amount of flexibility in graphics and programming, and the Logitech is all on-line wizards. That said, the Logitech is up and running in a fraction of the time it took me to get the Pronto working as I wanted it. However, the Logitech software is pretty inflexible, and does not allow the user to add IR discrete codes for any device, which is a pain as it only repeats the keys on the remote. Great for simple systems, but when you have audio / video scalers and the like with many nested functions, it makes it a little difficult to get exactly what you want. Hopefully Tech Support can help as apparently they can add codes to keys if you ask them as they have better software than that available to the consumer, but it will only be applied to your remote and not available to the wider public. Go figure?
So, after the first few days I think I can say that the Logitech Harmony 1100 is a good piece of kit, it does what it says on the box very well and for most casual users will be 110% or more of what they need. It looks very stylish, fits in with a modern decor and if you are happy with touch screen remotes, fits well in the hand and is very ergonomic in use.
