In my last post I mentioned The Trackr, which I use to track my most prized possessions, like my Harmony 650 Universal Remote (I may use The Trackr to keep track of my wife and kids, but for now I have one on my remote, my wallet and my keys). A few people have asked about the Harmony, so I thought I would write my next post about it and the history of why I believe everyone with more that 3 remotes should run out and get one of these.
I LOVE my Harmony remote and would highly recommend this to anyone, like me, who is faced with the “multiple remote syndrome”. As you know from my bio, I am always looking to get the latest and greatest technologies and experience. When the big screen TVs first came out, I went and plunked down some serious money to get the biggest and most advanced unit I could find. Of course, I had to hook my new DLP TV to a serious Yamaha Audio receiver, the Playstation 3, the WII, the old RCA VCR (to play the old classics) and my new HD cable box. Each one of these units came with their own remote, so, like everyone in this situation, I now had to deal with a whole pile of remotes. What a nightmare, clicking each remote to turn on the component, select the right setting and then making sure it was compatible with the other settings.Then if you lost one, you were completely stuck!
I was itching to fix this conundrum and found that Sony made a programmable universal remote, called the Remote Commander. I had to get one of these units and my wife bought it for me as a holiday gift. You could program a series of “events” and literally get the remote to turn on each component for a given action (like watch a DVD) and it would execute the various commands to get the experience all setup, all programmed by you, the user. This was by far the coolest device I had and my friends and family were truly impressed.With one touch, I could get all of my components turned on, set to the optimal settings and get the ultimate experience. This thing was the size of a brick and ate a whole lot of batteries, but I used it for 10 years and it was awesome. The remote started to fall apart due to all of the use, so I was perplexed to find a replacement.
Harmony saved the day for me (now owned by Logitech). If you have more than 3 remotes to control your gadgets, get one of these programmable remotes, you will love it!