Cheap Harmony Remote SST-688 Universal Remote Control (Silver) (Electronics) Price

DVD players have more features, receivers have more functions, and Tivo gives you unprecedented control over everything from your MP3 collection to Monday Night Football. The future has arrived, and it's great, but there's one drawback; there are a lot of buttons to push. If you've got a stack of remote controls, each with enough buttons to control the space shuttle, the Logitech Harmony H688 remote may bring some sanity to your coffee table. The H688 offers an innovative, web-based solution to corralling all of your remote functions into one device. Although there is room for improvement in some areas, this remote exceeded our expectations, even when it was asked to control a wide range of old and new devices.

The "Activity Remote"
Universal remote controls have been around for years, promising to simplify things for home theater or stereo users. The problem with these solutions, however, is that they are largely "dumb" devices, meaning they can only be programmed by pointing them at the another remote and pressing buttons on the old remote until the new one "learns" all the functions of the old. The Harmony H688 makes this hassle a thing of the past by placing solid state memory in the remote that can be updated via a PC USB connection. The information stored on the H688 is updated via an Internet connection and Logitech's (www.logitech.com) Harmony web site. The web site contains a database of virtually every electronics product under the sun that's capable of receiving signals from a remote control. The web interface walks users through a series of steps before uploading the proper controller interfaces to the H688.

Explore all the features of the Harmony remote.

While there are other web-enabled universal remote controls out there (most of which are more expensive than the H688), the Harmony H688's unique role as an "activity remote" is what really impresses. Instead of controlling each device independently, the H688 intelligently groups remote functions into activities. Each activity--which is granted a colored button at the top of the remote--corresponds to a grouping of devices. For instance, the "Watch TV" activity does more than turn on your TV, it also turns on your Tivo, A/V receiver, and digital cable box-- anything you have defined as integral to watching TV. And because the H688 knows everything about all of these devices, it knows how you want them to interact with each other. Want your receiver to control volume instead of your TV? Based on the settings you made in the web interface, the H688 knows this and promptly pumps up the volume on the receiver when you hit the volume button. It's this kind of intelligent control of all devices in, well, harmony that really places the Harmony H688 in a league of its own.

Design
The H688 obviously takes design queues from Tivo remote controls. This is certainly not a bad thing, as the remote fits comfortably in the hand and is well balanced. The all-important activity buttons arrayed at the top make it easy to trigger groups of devices that work together to perform a single function. The LCD, which simplifies navigation through device functions, is clear and bright when the backlight is on.

While the H688 offers a wealth of buttons, there is a downside. Many are too small and the button layout suffers from a focus on fashion before function. The "activity" buttons are especially cramped, and even though they are the most important buttons on the remote, they are the only ones that lack text backlighting. The ring of buttons in the middle portion of the remote are similarly cramped and they provide poor tactile response. Tivo users might find their thumbs sore after using the center directional pad for a few hours.

Setup
Once we installed the included Harmony Remote software on our computer and connected the remote via the supplied USB cable, we went to the Harmony web setup interface. After filling in information about our home theater equipment (brands and model numbers) the interface prompted us to make selections about how we wanted our devices to interact. When the selections process is complete, the web interface packages the completed settings into a file that is uploaded to the PC. The update file is then used by the Harmony Remote software to load settings onto the H688. From start to finish, the entire settings and upload process took about 20 minutes-- a pretty painless experience. One note of caution for Mac OSX users: unlike Windows, the Mac OS will not automatically launch an executable that has been downloaded to the desktop. This can confuse the Harmony web interface, which depends on this functionality to upload and verify downloads to the H688. Fortunately, we found that we could trick the web interface into working properly if we manually launched the update executable on the Mac desktop. Better software integration on the Mac side would be a welcome improvement.

In the Den
We spent some quality couch time with the H688 and came away impressed. Apart from our ergonomic gripes, we were delighted by how much more control the unit gave us over our home theater. In many ways, we felt like we were waving a magic wand, turning on whole sets of equipment and firing up movies and CDs with a single button press. For more precise control of each device we could easily navigate to that device in the LCD menu and tinker with more specific settings. We also liked knowing that we could customize the remote for more advanced needs via the web interface. The basic settings were powerful enough, though, to offer the simplicity and control armchair commanders crave.

Pros

• Excellent integration of functions across all device types
• Easy setup and customization via web interface
• Up-to-date and accurate database of all devices

Cons

• Some cramped keys and lack of ergonomics
• Mac OSX compatibility could be better

CATEGORY:	Electronics
MANUFACTURER:	Harmony Remote
FEATURES:	2MB of Memory, Can also be programmed via IR Learning, Easy-to-Read Interactive Display, Backlight Glow for buttons and LCD, Convenient access to PVR controls - FF, RW, Pause, Play, etc.
TYPE:	sst-688s, sst688s, sst68, st688, st688s, sst68s, universal, channel, multi, function
MEDIA:	Electronics
MPN:	SST-688S
# OF MEDIA:	1
ACCESSORIES:
UPC:	830021000419