Logitech Harmony Remote - A Great Gift Idea
A few years ago for Christmas my wife got me a Logitech Harmony Remote (I think it is the 880). It is far an away one of the best universal remotes I have ever seen! I was reminded of this today as I wanted to make some changes to it.
A few months ago I finally broke down and bought an XBox 360. I decided to make it the DVD player in my home theater setup. Now with the addition of Netflix streaming directly to the XBox this proved to be a good decision. For the last few months I haven’t had my Harmony remote programmed to run the XBox. I have been having to use the Xbox controller to play movies. Today I set out to program the Xbox.
You program the remote using software from Logitech on your computer. It is a really easy to use and intuitive piece of software (and I don’t say that about much software, I’m pretty picky). Since I don’t have the computer I originally set the remote up on, I had to get the software. I expected to be told at Logitech’s site that the software was only for Windows. To my delight they had a Mac version of the software.
I installed the software, plugged the remote in via USB. It downloaded all my current settings (Awesome! I don’t have to start from scratch). I added the Xbox 360 device and updated my “Activities” to use the Xbox instead of the old DVD player. Activities is the way the remote arranges the things you want to do with your entertainment system, Watch DVD, Watch TV, etc. I update the remote, pointed it at my devices and clicked the “Watch DVD” activity. Everything just worked!
Harmony Remotes from Logitech are the “Mac” of the Universal Remote world. They are a little more expensive than generic universal remotes, but worth the extra money. They are a great gift idea because the person is reminded how awesome you are every time time they use their TV!
Share on Facebook![[Post to Twitter]](http://www.imroot.com/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/tweet-this-small.png)
Tweet This
December 7th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Just be thankful you didn’t have to use the old software–that was JUNK. It’s MUCH better now (although, I sometimes wish they had a non-web-based version).
On another note, I’ve never been able to get mine to work right on my Macbook, but I will try again next time I have to configure it. Maybe they’ve updated the software since I tried last.
Oh, and I would suggest newegg.com for all your Harmony Remote purchasing needs. I got mine from there for around $65 when Best Buy wanted $150!