I've been a big fan of Logitech's Harmony remote controls for a long time, having sought a solution to controlling an ever-expanding range of audio-visual equipment since back in the eighties when I first combined a TV with a video-recorder and a satellite box. Today I also have a DVD player, an AV amp, an Apple TV and an Xbox under the TV, each with their own remote controls, each bringing further difficulty to answering the question 'How the £$%* do I turn the TV on and watch this?'
The TV manufacturers all offer their own variant of the 'one remote to rule them all' approach, almost all of which fail dismally, generally because they're predicated on buying all your equipment from the same manufacturer. The 'One-4-all' range - of which I've had a couple - didn't help much either: Their approach was to replicate all the functions of multiple remotes, which still required you to understand that the DVD player was plugged into HDMI2 on the amp, with an optical output to the amp on Op1 and an output to the TV on HDMI1, changing the volume required you to select the virtual amp remote rather than the virtual TV remote etc etc. Since most people don't have a clue about how the boxes are connected up, let alone the subtleties of AV delivery, the approach is almost useless.
Then I stumbled over Harmony devices, which take a completely different tack. You use Logitech's software to record the particular devices you have, answer some questions about how they're connected together and then define activities you typically want to do - Watch TV, Watch DVD, Listen to Radio etc - and how you want the remote to behave in those activites (should the Volume button control the amp or the TV, for example). It needs someone who understands AV to a reasonable extent to do the configuration but, once done, it just works. The software is a bit clunky, you may need to get some help with odder devices (although Logitech's support is superb) but it's by miles the best approach I've come across. If a babysitter can turn up and confidently manage your AV equipment after 30 seconds of explanation, you know they've got something right.
So I have two of these devices in the house:
The TV manufacturers all offer their own variant of the 'one remote to rule them all' approach, almost all of which fail dismally, generally because they're predicated on buying all your equipment from the same manufacturer. The 'One-4-all' range - of which I've had a couple - didn't help much either: Their approach was to replicate all the functions of multiple remotes, which still required you to understand that the DVD player was plugged into HDMI2 on the amp, with an optical output to the amp on Op1 and an output to the TV on HDMI1, changing the volume required you to select the virtual amp remote rather than the virtual TV remote etc etc. Since most people don't have a clue about how the boxes are connected up, let alone the subtleties of AV delivery, the approach is almost useless.
Then I stumbled over Harmony devices, which take a completely different tack. You use Logitech's software to record the particular devices you have, answer some questions about how they're connected together and then define activities you typically want to do - Watch TV, Watch DVD, Listen to Radio etc - and how you want the remote to behave in those activites (should the Volume button control the amp or the TV, for example). It needs someone who understands AV to a reasonable extent to do the configuration but, once done, it just works. The software is a bit clunky, you may need to get some help with odder devices (although Logitech's support is superb) but it's by miles the best approach I've come across. If a babysitter can turn up and confidently manage your AV equipment after 30 seconds of explanation, you know they've got something right.
So I have two of these devices in the house:
 Harmony One - for the front room |  Harmony 555 - for the bedroom |
But ever since the appearance of iDevices - and, particularly, the iPad - I've thought 'Wouldn't it be fantastic to produce an app that replicates the functionality of the configured Harmony remote, but communicates with an infrared device to send signals to the equipment? Then you could control it all with gestures on a big touchscreen, which would be a) massively more functional and b) just downright cool. A few months ago, Logitech produced exactly that, when they released the Harmony Link. Which is still not on sale in the UK, dammit. I've only been checking just about every day...
But now I'm not so sure I care. Most of our AV consumption is watching some variant of Sky - live TV, recorded programmes, Sky Anytime. And, last night, I picked up an update to the Sky+ app on the iPad, which has introduced control of the Sky HD box from the iPad.
But now I'm not so sure I care. Most of our AV consumption is watching some variant of Sky - live TV, recorded programmes, Sky Anytime. And, last night, I picked up an update to the Sky+ app on the iPad, which has introduced control of the Sky HD box from the iPad.
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Fired it up, it picked up the Sky box and it just worked. Utterly fantastic. It's not often I find myself praising Sky or Murdoch... but you have to love this!
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