Back in April, I bought my first universal remote control: Logitech Harmony 300i. After using it for a while, I realized its major weakness: when I watch a movie using my media player on my TV screen, I have one remote now, but everything becomes unpractical since I always need to push one extra button when I want to push a button from different “original” remote. For example, to turn on the TV, I need to press TV button and power button, then to turn on my media player I need to press DVD button and power button. 4 button presses for something I usually can achieve in 2 presses. Not to mention I still have to do the same when selecting a movie, adjusting volume, etc.
Logitech Harmony 650 introduces something that my 300i doesn’t have: the concept of “activity”. Instead of having to choose device every-time, we can define our own custom activities like “watching Apple TV”, “watching DVD”, and so on. For each activity, we can assign functions from different remotes into one interface. Then, when watching Apple TV (for example), the direction buttons (up, down, left, right) will replace direction buttons from Apple remote, but volume buttons will replace volume buttons from TV remote.
With this concept, I am now happily using my Harmony 650 remote as my primary remote in living room. It is still inherit similar problem as Harmony 300i: the response time is a bit slow. But so far, with a little patience, I can still manage.
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