joetrent's Full Review: Logitech Harmony® 659 LCD Remote Control
I call our gaggle of electronics a “Home Theater”. You can call your gaggle that too, if you want. If yours is like ours, it’s made of components from different manufacturers, from different production years, with a bunch of non-compatible remote controls. This gaggle doesn’t make the wife giggle when it comes time to watch a show from any of the various sources such our regular TV, C-band (big dish) satellite, VCR, or DVD. That was all fixed with the addition of the Harmony SST-659 remote control.
Background
At first, she started out livid with her inability to operate the system, with or without the remotes. Over the years, she transitioned from grumbling to apathetic about this situation. That is not good when I would try to get her excited about some new piece of home entertainment gear that we just can’t live without. Yep, I’ve found we can live without it. That’s no fun.
Our system is currently comprised of a JVC 32” TV, a Sony 5.1 audio/video (A/V) receiver, a General Instrument 4DTV C-band satellite receiver, a Toshiba DVD player, and a Magnavox VCR that also doubles as the TV tuner when watching regular over-the-air TV. That’s a lot of remotes. I’ve gotten that number down to three remotes to operate the system. The 4DTV satellite remote is the main culprit. The vast majority of universal remotes do not support 4DTV. It is “universal” to a point. It turns everything on, but will not operate the A/V receiver or the DVD. And like most universal remotes, it’s really multiple individual remotes in one. You know, to operate the TV, push the “TV” button on top and then all the buttons are in TV mode, then press the “VCR” button and the same buttons now operate the VCR, then push the blah, blah, blah…anyway, you get the point by now. Its really different remotes in one box, that none of the button labels match anything you’re trying to do. You have to memorize everything. Yeah, right! TV just ain’t supposed to be this hard!
To put this in some kind of perspective, over the years, she’s made our “Home Theater” experience a running joke with family and friends. She has a whole shtick about me pushing buttons to changes TV inputs, receiver settings, push this button, change remotes, push that button, etc. I’ve never once seen her crack a smile while retelling this joke. That is really, really not good!
The Solution
Being the brilliant, beautiful, and common sense wife that she is, she would ask why a remote couldn’t be made that would let her push a single button to watch TV, and then the system would set everything up to do that. The same thing would apply with watching satellite, or videotape, or a DVD.
We’ve seen these remotes on TV shows about high-end home theaters. We also found out they cost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to buy and be professionally set up. Lower cost alternatives exist, but now you’re into XML type programming and hoping that your specific equipment is supported. Yep, now we’d be back into the “hard work and hope” mode of doing stuff, and I’m really lazy.
Enter the Harmony SST-659 remote from Intrigue Technologies. This Canadian company solved all of our home theater remote control problems at a very reasonable price with minimal effort for the lazy guy. They use their unique web-based “wizard” setup screens and their Smart State Technology (the SST part) to make setup and operation a snap. Bear with me a little bit, cause being a writing impaired type, I’ll probably make this sound way more complicated than it is. Ready? Here goes….
First the bad news, if you call it that. The Harmony remotes must be set up using a computer with Internet connection capability and a USB port, which connects the remote control to the web. It will not work if you don’t have this setup, or access to one. It works on both PC and Mac. Personally, I think this system works great, but it could give you a fur-ball if you’re Internet connection is down when you want to “tweak” something. And trust me, after you try this remote, you’re gonna WANT to tweak around. It’s just too cool, and too easy, to resist. Maybe Harmony will make a CD available some day for standalone use. They sure get asked enough.
The SST-659 is an infrared only remote. Sorry, no RF on this model. They do have RF models available though. There are three angled IR transmitters in the head that give very fast and accurate “throws” so hitting the equipment has never been a problem.
Finally, a last word on the “maybe” bad news front. The 659 is not an XML or true macro programmable remote. This has certainly not caused us any issues. Real “tweakers” may want to look at Harmony’s higher end models.
We picked the SST-659 because it’s called “Family Friendly”. It has 51 hard buttons, vice a scroll wheel and LCD type buttons, to control the home entertainment system. That sounds like a lot of buttons, but I would guess that the layout is immediately intuitive for the vast majority of users. The layout reflects the familiar buttons found on remote controls. The remote is about eight and a half inches long and about two and a half inches wide at it widest part. It’s shaped like an hourglass, or as some people describe it, TIVO like. It’s really comfortable for one-handed operation.
At the very top are the “Off” button and a “Help” button”. (More on “Help” later.) Below that are the LCD, activity, and device buttons. Three activity buttons control a specific activity. The fourth is called “More Activities”, and those activities are accessed via the LCD screen. The group below this are what I consider control buttons. This includes four-way curser buttons, exit, menu, guide, info, and that kind of stuff. The third group down is the volume and channel toggles, and the channel number buttons for direct numeric access. The last group at the bottom is the transport button layout. This is the rewind, play, FF, pause, etc used for DVD, VCR and TIVO type stuff. The layout is clean, easy to use, and familiar to both her highness and myself. A programmable, blue backlighting is used to see the keys in the dark. It looks really neat in a dark room. It’s programmable for the amount of time on, the type of buttons that activate it, and what group of buttons gets lit up.
The Harmony remote is setup using a series of questions and answers (or wizards) on their setup website to ask you what equipment you have and how you want to use it to perform certain activities such as “Watch TV” or Watch DVD”, etc. Many of these screens use pictures to further simplify the setup.
There are currently over 30,000 devices in the harmony database. If anyone enters the commands for a specific piece of gear, everybody has access to them. If you enter your brand and model, and no match is found, you get a list of suggested equipment to try. As if that’s not good enough, the web site will ask you to send sample signals into the learning end of the remote to the database, and it’ll try to match it to known signal files. As a final assault to remote success, the SST-659 is a learning remote. You can name each command and send it to build your own database for your device. It’s also extremely easy to do that.
The harmony setup is divided into two main areas. The first is “Devices”, and the second is “Activities”. This can’t be simpler. Devices are the brand name and model number of each component of your system that are IR controlled. This can even include remote controlled lights, drapes, etc. Just make sure the IR receiver can “see” the remote output.
Activities are the things you want to do such as “Watch Satellite”, Play DVD, “Watch TV”, Listen to Music”, etc. I think you can setup up to 14 unique activities. It seems that if it can be IR controlled, you can set up activities to do it. The trick to “activity-based” thinking is not to over think it. Do one activity at a time. If you’re setting up an activity such as “Watch TV”, select the equipment you need to watch TV, and then answer the wizard questions related to how they are used when watching TV. Then setup another activity such as “Watch DVD”. The wizard will ask what equipment you use, and how you use it. Since both of these activities use the TV, it won’t turn the TV on again when switching between these activities because it already knows the TV’s on. But, it will turn off any equipment not listed for a specific activity unless you tell the Harmony to leave it on. It just doesn’t get simpler.
The SST (again, Smart State Technology) “remembers” what state or condition your home theater equipment is in during the current activity you are enjoying, and what your equipment needs to do when changing activities. When you change activities from say “Watch Satellite” to “Watch DVD”, the remote knows your TV is on, so it leaves it on. It also knows that the satellite receiver is on, and you don’t need it to watch a DVD, so it turns it off. Based on my answers in the web-based activity set up wizards, the 659 also knows that while watching satellite that the A/V receiver is set to “SAT/TV” mode, and the TV is set to the “TV” input. Again, based on my answers in the activity set up, the remote switches the A/V receiver from “SAT/TV’ to the “DVD/LD”, and the TV from the ”TV” to “Video1” input. This is done by only pushing one button!!!!! Wow, it does all this stuff when switching back and forth between activities. I still marvel at watching all this switching inputs, settings, on’s/off’s with only the push of one button. My Queen just smiles…and it’s about time!
I said that the “SST” remembers” when I started out above. I feel that the right word would be “presumes”. When setting up the activities, the “state” you want is put into the remote, and the remote “presumes” this happens. From there, the remote knows what it did, and will send changes based on that presumption. For example, the remote is not really getting a signal back from the TV that it is “ON”. It presumes that because it sent the “ON” signal, then therefore it is. Our granddaughter proves this out. When she’s showing us how cute she can be, it’s always in front of the entertainment unit. It’s amazing how many infrared signals that one little girl can block even with the fantastic IR “throw” coming out of the 3 transmitters in the front of this device. Here’s where the “Help” button comes into play. When switching activities on the remote, and things don’t go the way you expect, just hit the “Help” button. A series of “Yes” or “No” questions come up. For example, it will ask, “Is the TV on?” If it is not, and it’s supposed to be, answer “No” and the remote will send a signal to turn it on. It will go through the whole activity set up to resynch the system. Or, back to lazy me, I just turn everything off, and then hit the activity button again. It works just fine. By the way, this happens very rarely.
In the “Advanced” setup mode of the web site you can do other really neat stuff. A couple of examples include mapping the keys on the remote control to do what you want. That screen has a big picture and grid layout of the 659 remote next a list of its keys, and pull down selections to assign a specific command to a button. Another example of advanced customizing is interkey and interdevice time delays. Some of the high tech TV’s have a warm-up cycle before other commands can be processed. You can set the time between sending commands between devices or individual keys to compensate for this delay. You can do tons more, but I didn’t have any need to do them, so I’m not all that familiar with all those capabilities.
The site also includes a FAQ area, on-line help, and a more complete manual. It really is very easy to navigate and use. My whole setup took 40 minutes. Half of that time was just looking around. You can also go to Harmonyremote.com and take a test drive of the software before you buy. Be aware though, it’s only the basic setup. Advanced mode is awesome.
How It Went for Us
We ordered the remote from Bludo.com. They are an authorized distributor from Harmony. (This is important since I’ve heard that Harmony only honors the warranty if it was bought from an authorized distributor). Their site is easy to use, and they had a $56 off coupon. With shipping, the price of our SST-659 was $141. That’s a small price to pay for the WAF (wife acceptance factor), and her smiling ability to run our system for the first time in over 10 years. We got the remote in about three days after the order was placed.
The box contained the remote, 4 AAA batteries, and quick start book, a mini-USB cable, and the software CD.
Included in the quick start manual is a device (equipment) worksheet to write out the type of equipment you have, the brand name, and the model number. After scrunching around to get this info from the backs of all the devices, it was finally synopsized into one place. Doing this form will simplify the setup.
The next step was to plug the USB cable into the front of the remote, and into the computer. After that, Install the CD into the computer and follow the directions to install the software. This CD contains the file transfer software, and a program that automatically connected me to the Harmony setup site login page. It automatically goes to the Harmony site each time I plug the remote into the computer.
The first thing needed on the site is to establish an account by entering your name and address, and setting up a user name and password. This account is where the last remote configuration is stored, and where all setup and changes occur.
Once that was done, a screen comes up to tell the program what types of devices I have. There is a list of types of devices such as TV, DVD, etc. For each device I have, I clicked the check box, went to the pull down menu and then selected the brand name. Once this was done, the screen automatically switched to a new screen to enter the model number. I entered these from the worksheet. Every device except the VCR was recognized. A screen came up with recommendations for the VCR. I kept the one that was most recommended. (This works perfectly, by the way).
From here, a screen comes up to set activities. At this point, I was still in the basic setup mode. The first activity set up to come up was “Watch TV”. Here’s where the wizard questions started. The first was “Which device do you normally use to control the sound?” My choices were TV or A/V receiver. It was smart enough to know I had one from my device list. It then asked what I used to change the channel. Again, it was smart enough to give me a choice between TV and VCR. I chose VCR. The next screen popped up and asked me what channel the TV needed to be tuned to. I clicked 3. The next question wanted to know what TV input was needed. I selected TV. And the last question asked what I set the A/V receiver to. I said Video2. That was it; the “Watch TV” activity was set up. That took all of 30 seconds with the software making correct assumptions about what I needed based on the devices I told it I had earlier.
Here’s where it got a little confusing, because I was using the basic setup routine. It then asked to set up in order, a “Watch VCR”, a “Watch a DVD”, and “Listen to Music”. I bypassed the “Watch VCR” because I was going to customize those commands to the remote under the “Watch TV’ activity. My VCR automatically switches between VCR/TV depending on whether there is a tape installed, so I didn’t want a separate activity for this. I followed the same setup for the DVD as with the TV. And, I cancelled the “Listen to Music” setup since it wasn’t relevant. I waited, but nothing came up to set up for the satellite activity. Ah Oh!! Turned out not to be a problem. The basic set up routine only covered these simple operations. From there, I selected “Advanced” at the top of the screen. I gotta tell you, that opened up a whole new world.
In advanced mode you can add/remove/customize devices, learn remote commands, add/remove/modify activities, customize buttons, and all the other really powerful stuff you would want to do to a remote control. It’s very intuitive in this area. I selected “Add a New Activity”, and then I selected “Watch Satellite”. I followed the same Q&A as I did with the other activities.
One important command was missing from the original 4DTV remote. I selected the “modify the button behavior” section, and went to the bottom of the page where there is an activity box to add a custom command. I typed in a command name, and a screen popped up with a picture showing how to use the original 4DTV remote to send the command to the Harmony database. The instructions said to position the remotes as shown and press the desired button. Almost instantly, a box popped up saying that the command was received. I scrolled up the page to the button I wanted this command assigned to, clicked the scroll down block, and selected the new command. All done.
I fooled around with the advanced options for a little while for the fun of it, and it was time to download the configuration into the remote. This was a simple as everything else I did during the setup. Just click the update remote button, and wait for it to tell you it’s done.
I unhooked the remote from the computer and got ready for the big test. The 659 scored perfectly. It got an A++, a 4.0, a…OK, I’ll stop, it’s just a remote control. Did I mention this took a total of about 40 minutes, including playtime?
Every activity worked flawlessly. All the switching and looping, and setting up was done by just selecting the one activity button. Not bad for so little effort. Harmony really has this stuff down to a science. ONE HINT: before running the remote for the first time, shut off all the equipment, press help on the remote, and answer the questions. This ensures you’re synched up the first time.
Great info can be found:
http://www.harmonyremote.com/
http://www.remotecentral.com/sst659/index.html
http://www.remotecentral.com/cgi-bin/mboard/rc-harmony/list.cgi
In Summary
Did I cover everything in this long-winded dissertation? Not even close.
Is the SST-659 perfect? Probably not, it is for us.
Would I recommend it to a friend? You bet (if I had any L)
Can the wife run the system? A happy wife makes for a happy husband. I’m ecstatic!!!
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