OK my wife asked me if she could gift me this year for Father’s Day since I always seem to get her something for Mother’s Day- this year I got her a TMobile Dash with Windows Mobile 6 on it and she loves it. Personally I was embarrassed seeing her pull out my old PDA2K and use it. The reason why she liked it was the fact that it was easier to read Yes as we get older our corneas thicken, hence the arm distance rule when reading applies. It affects us all. She really liked it and wanted to give me a gift fitting of the Gift of the Magi. I requested a new Logitech Harmony Remote that I have been eyeing for some time for the new home theater we are constructing in the addition that has been occupying all my free time pulling cable, purchasing new components, laying out speaker cable for the 9 speakers +1 subwoofer in the Great Room dubbed “The Audition” by my youngest, 4 speakers for our bedroom, 2 for our bathroom, 2 for our deck, 2 for the dining room and 2 for our kitchen. There are also Zone cables layed out as well. Well you may be wondering where I am going with all this. I needed a new Universal remote, the Sony IR remote I have now still works great(I actually have 3 of them paired with an X10 Pyramid system that does RF), but I wanted a new one that was easy to program, use and also did RF as well as IR. The one that I spec’d out was the Harmony 890. I heard a lot of problems with these, but most of these problems were remedied with the latest software update and told my better half not to purchase it retail, but pick it up off of eBay for significantly less. She did, won her auction well  under suggested retail price, and it arrived yesterday.

Setting it up from the box was fairly simple, it was far from the NIB condition stated on the auction, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt and placed the remote in its docking station/charger. It had a nice pretty display with a slideshow of images as it charged up. I let it charge up overnight as I got back from a business trip late and wanted to catch-up with the family. The next day during lunch I headed over to the Logitech website and downloaded their latest software for the remote and installed it.

Here is what comes in the box:

• Harmony® 890 remote control
• Charging station
• Harmony® RF wireless extender
• USB cable
• 2 AC adapters
• 4 dual-IR emitters
• Lithium-ion battery
• Installation CD
• Installation guide
• 1-year limited hardware warranty

Here are some pictures of the remote:

Remote and charger

The software is an incremental part of the whole Harmony experience and takes the most time in setting up your remote in how you use it. It steps you through how you use your equipment for basic tasks. Installing the software on Windows Vista was painfully slow. It was so slow that I walked away and postponed taking lunch for a half an hour. OK now with it installed I was ready to launch the software and start configuring it.

The components I am working with are mix of old and new. We spent more on our addition than originally planned, so I will upgrade slowly overtime as technology increases and prices go down. Here is my current list:

1.HP 42” TV to be replaced with a Sharp Aquos 52” or Sony Bravia 52”

2. ReplayTV 4505 networked with 2 other ReplayTVs

3.Yamaha RX-V2700 Receiver

4. Xbox 360

5. Pioneer F727 DVD changer -2 daisy-chained

6. Pioneer DV- PD-F1009 301-Disc CD Changer

7. Windows Vista Media Center w/1.4TB RAID local storage w/ 10TB NAS and Sony 200 Disk Changer

8. Infocus X1 Projector

9. RichVision 135” powered screen ($89 for an 11’ screen not bad)

10. Motorola Cablebox

11. Pioneer Laser Tracking Turntable

(My Dual Tape Deck, LD Player and HI-Fi VCRs are going away due to the dust buildup from lack of use)

It is  pretty easy to use and configure for different activities like watch movies on the big screen, which starts a macro by turning on the receiver,switching the input to DVD, turning on  the DVD changers, and bringing up the list of titles,lowering the projection screen and dimming  the lights in one area of the room and turning them off in another (thanks to Insteon hardware and software), and it turns on the projector all with a press of the button. No we didn’t opt for automated  shades since they were very  expensive and not green(they  used  power).

The remote charges in its cradle when not in  use and is easy for the whole family to use.  I  found you  can even customize the buttons and icons on the display from various websites on the web.

So far its the best remote for our family because it remembers states(on or off) of  devices so if you have multiple press of a button it won’t confuse the device and its easy to use and program.

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