Need more Harmony?

How many remotes do you have? 3? 4? 14? Several weeks ago, on Leo Laporte's The Tech Guy webcast, I heard Ron Rosberg talk about the Logitech's Hamomy remotes. I bought one (Logitech Harmony 676 Universal Remote Control) and it has been a winner for everyone in my house.

What's so special about it?

1. It's theme driven. To watch TV, you press the button with the picture of the TV. In our case, that turns on the receiver and sets it to Video 2, turns on the DVR, turns on the TV and sets in to Video 3. Press the DVD button and it turns off the DVR, turns on the DVD player, and changes the input on the receiver to DVD. One button to watch TV, one button to watch a DVD, one button to listen to music, and one button to turn everything off.
2. It's fully functional. With other universal remotes, I always lost some functions. On this remote, it has a small display that you can program for whatever functions you want. For instance, my DVR remote has three buttons labeled A, B, and C. My Harmony remote only has dedicated buttons for A and B but I was able to assign C to one of the buttons on the display. You can set up as many pages on the display as you need.
3. It's a snap to set up. To set up the remote, you go to Logitech's website. On the site you work through a wizard where you list all of your components and how you need those components set for the various "themes". When you are finished you hook the remote up with a USB cable and it downloads the settings file to the remote. And then . . . it just works!

They're not cheap but for me and my family it's been well worth it. If you try one, let me know how you like it.