Well it sound like you have the Harmony controlling things very well indeed.
However Graham, honest answer here. Forget you are a techie for a minute. How difficult would that be for the ordinary non-techie person to programme the Harmony to this level, if indeed they could actually do it?
Which model of Harmony do you own?
Arghh! this thread has been hi-jacked, I only mentioned the harmony in post #3 as it could have been useful to send a sequence of commands for the OP if nothing else worked.
Anyway, the biggest problem is getting your head around the concept of activities. The harmony shouldn't been seen as a simple replacement for 6 or 10+ remotes.
You don't need to remember buttons as each button on the remote does what it should do for a particular activity. The configurable LCD soft buttons cover what isn't specifically printed on the actual buttons.
You set up the remote by telling it which devices you have to control. You could stop here and have a pretty pointless all in one remote that you have to switch between programmed devices.
The real fun starts when you create activities. With a single button press 'Radio 4' could be set up as switch off TV screen, switch on sound-bar or amp, set input to stereo/direct on amp, switch to freeview and switch to radio 4, adjust volume.
'DVD' could be set up as switch on DVD, put STB into standby, switch TV to hdmi3, switch amp to DVD input, switch to Dolby/DTS, eject tray and/or play disc in tray, switch 16:9 or 4:3 depending on squareness of eyes etc. etc.
The buttons on the harmony will correspond to the activity, i.e. 'volume' will control the amp or TV or freeview box depending upon configuration, 'menu' on 'watch DVD' activity will bring up DVD menu, 'menu' on 'watch freeview' activity will being up freeview's menu.
The LCD soft buttons can be configured to cover all sorts of things, the fvp4000t for example has a few buttons missing from the original remote and these missing functions, such as 'media' can be added to a soft button, menu and guide works and I refuse to acknowledge the 'home' button on the original remote and the 'plus' button for that matter, they're menu and opt on my harmony and the brilliant thing is the buttons are always in the same place regardless of device's own remote (I have a horribly laid out panasonic and also samsung remote that thankfully I no longer need to touch)
This is just scratching the surface as to what's convenient.
Programming the devices into the harmony is fairly simple, realising what can be done with activities can take hours to initially set up or, if like me as I change things, years later I'm still doing the odd tweak. I find the harmony incredibly useful.
I looked online before posting #3 and discounted the £35 model as it does not have an LCD 'soft button' screen. The £50 (600) model is over priced and only offers 5 devices and no idea about amount of activites. The 650 model makes more sense with 8 devices, but isn't available at a decent price. Some of the newer models have a battery that isn't replaceable which means cracking it open after approx. 5 years or throwing it away.
To give you an idea about discounts, I bought a new 515 a few years ago for £20 which would have been ideal for the OP. It's used in the back room to control semi-redundant equipment. I use a 785 which does everything I want and it gets tweaked every now and again as I update.
The OP, if the humax remote is struggling, would do better with an all in one universal remote for around £10 to control TV and humax or possibly a big button universal remote for around £15 again controlling both TV and humax.
So techie hat off (I know you asked Graham, but I thought I'd jump in), yes it's complicated, but well worth investing the time. Having said that though I couldn't recommend any current harmony at the moment, although amazon did have £100 knocked off an okay one a few weeks ago.
I suppose if you 'get' the harmony then you don't look back, maybe a bit like marmite.
The OP doesn't need a harmony remote and I'm sure if the hotel mode menu can be set then there won't be any need for extra button switching to display the humax correctly
Faust - 9 hours ago »
Well it sound like you have the Harmony controlling things very well indeed.
However Graham, honest answer here. Forget you are a techie for a minute. How difficult would that be for the ordinary non-techie person to programme the Harmony to this level, if indeed they could actually do it?
Which model of Harmony do you own?
It's a Harmony Ultimate one. You don't programme it in the sense that you actually have to write any code.
For example with a single PVR and a TV you just plug the Harmony into a PC using USB and log into the Harmony website using the provided software.
The first step is to tell the software which devices you have (Logitech have a massive database containing the commands for virtually any infra red controlled device).
In the above case you tell it the make and model of your PVR and TV.
You then create activities to use the devices you have added. The software asks various questions all you have to do is click on the appropriate button. Normally that's all you need to do though you can assign any button on the remote to a command the device understands. For instance you might want a specific button to display the guide. Simply identify the button and tell it to send the guide command.
The more sophisticated models allow a macro (simply a series of commands to be attached to a button). For example for a Foxsat-HDR assign the schedule command followed by the red button to the guide button on the remote.
Example of the 2 activities you would add for the above simple system
Activity called "Watch My PVR"
Which devices does this activity use - TV and PVR
Which device handles the sound TV
Which input on the TV is used for PVR - HDM1
Activity called Watch My TV
Which devices does this activity use - TV
Which device handles the sound TV
Which input on the TV is used for TV
That's it simply click on the synch button and your remote will download everything you need to your PC.
I aso have the Harmony Hub, which lets you use a tablet, PC or Smartphone and the Harmony software to use the same activities as the remote. Your tablet becomes a large remote control with touch screen buttons and will work from anywhere you have WiFi (Ideal for a remote TV)
The two are quite expensive but that's down to the large number of devices. For 3 or 4 the cheaper remotes are more than adequate.
Say a TV, Amplifier, PVR and Blu-ray player.
If the only problem is directivity, then the Humax remote scheduling app (not paired) can also be used as a WiFi remote control for free if you have a smartphone or tablet.
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