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New Logitech Harmony Touch remote

  • Thread starter Thread starter Deleted member 473
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Deleted member 473

I have obtained one of these from Amazon Vine to review. Lovely remote! It worked perfectly apart from one thing. It understands about the 6 Humax configurations, and tests your remote to see which you are using. Unfortunately, it then ignores the result, unlike the Harmony 900! So, when I want to watch my Freeview+ HDR T2, my Foxsat HDR springs to life! Very disappointing.

So, the only way to use it with multiple boxes seems to be to teach it every command on one remote.

Apart from that, ergonomics are excellent, with a large touch screen with swipe scrolling, fewer buttons, but those all important colour buttons are there, unlike on the Harmony One. The battery is sealed, unfortunately, though it may be possible to open the case.

One thing missing that the 900 has is that RF signal to an IR repeater near your equipment.

Oh, and Merry Xmas to all!
 
It has colour buttons you say? The one big show stopper for me with the Harmony One. If they fix the problem you describe then I will be looking more closely at one of these.
 
Yes, 4 colour buttons along the bottom. The Logitech 900 remote does, too.

I like the design of the Touch better. Its face and buttons are flat and the hard buttons are larger. The number pad has been moved as an option to the touch screen. Otherwise, that can display extra commands, or up to 50 favourite channels. The channel icons scroll vertically rather than being paged, like on the 900.
 
Update: It died, totally died! However, Logitech got a replacement back to me within a week.

The Mode problem is still not fixed, so I am thinking of setting up six virtual devices in each of the six modes to help them (and us) out. One problem is that the devices have slightly different commands, eg, Hub command, schedule.

I know the Foxsat HD, Foxsat HDR and Fox T2 use common modes, does anyone know if the Youview box does too? Any others?
 
Black Hole said:
If I remember correctly the YouView box uses the same remote but it cannot change mode.
Click to expand...

Right, thanks. So I assume it is Mode 1.

Actually, I could check by setting up the remote and seeing which mode it controls. Interesting that mode changing is not allowed, though.
 
Yep, the Youview box uses Mode 1 and I have changed my Foxsat to Mode 2 (which the 555 set up perfectly using the command testing procedure).
 
Mike0001 said:
Apart from that, ergonomics are excellent, with a large touch screen with swipe scrolling, fewer buttons, but those all important colour buttons are there, unlike on the Harmony One.
Click to expand...

I've just got one of these remotes - Logitech gave me a third off and free shipping so I thought I'd upgrade my Harmony 300i.

I have to say, I'm a little disappointed so far. The buttons I use most often, the PVR controls, are at the top above the screen and hard to reach while holding the remote in the normal position. The shape and weighting are designed for easy thumb access to the touch screen so it's a stretch to the controls above. There are no physical buttons for skip forward/back which I miss. I've mapped the FF/REW buttons to skip but then when I want to fast-forward I need to find the button on the touch screen. Maybe I can overcome some of this with gestures.

I configured the touch screen to show the four buttons I use most often at the top then found that there are two 'always there' options that push everything else down (numeric keypad and gesture controls). It would be so much better if they used side-swipes to bring in the numeric keypad and gesture panels.

I really like the fact that you can customise the remote while using it rather than having to connect it to your computer. It means, for example, that I can tune it over time so that the commands I use most are near the top of the list. I also appreciate the ability to include functions from other devices in the command list (so, for example, I have both the Humax & TV aspect controls available at once).

It's a shame that the editing controls can't be turned off in Settings though for normal day-to-day use - it makes it too easy for other family members to move things around, even inadvertently. Lastly, for now, the help button is too easy to press and before you know it your Humax has powered off while you're watching something! The long-press on help to bring up more advanced options is a nice feature but I'd like to completely disable the short press mode.

I'll stick with it but might end up going back to the 300i. It isn't easy to use both at once since the Touch has a memory and knows which devices are turned on at any time. If the Humax is turned on with the 300i then the Touch will turn it off when Watch TV is pressed.

It's fairly well known that sending ZERO-ZERO-ZERO to the Humax is a fair workaround for the lack of a discrete power-on code (it will power-up the Humax if it is off and is effectively a no-op in most other modes) but I've yet to find a way of making the Touch use this to bring the Humax out of standby - might have to ask Logitech directly.
 
I've set up my remote to have separate power on/off commands for the Humax and set the power on command to just ZERO for 3 seconds. That's working nicely so far. I've also created a 'Humax Only' activity for when I want to leave it on for development or watching elsewhere in the house.
 
af123 said:
I've set up my remote to have separate power on/off commands for the Humax and set the power on command to just ZERO for 3 seconds. That's working nicely so far. I've also created a 'Humax Only' activity for when I want to leave it on for development or watching elsewhere in the house.
Click to expand...

I have gone back to my Harmony 900 and the Touch is in its box, unused. (The second, replacement one! The first one died within one week.)

You have clearly investigated this more than me. One feature I wasn't clear about, but wasn't prepared to program every command on both Humax boxes to find out, was that the Favourites menu instructions were ambiguous. It wasn't clear whether you got a separate one for each activity, like previous remotes, or just one shared one, which made no sense at all.

This is what the manual says:

"Favorites are your favorite TV channels. Using the myharmony.com website you can select up to 50 favorite
channels to display on the remote. Selecting a favorite channel will start your “Watch TV” activity, if it’s not
already started, and tune directly to that channel. Using the touch screen, you can add, remove and reorder
your favorite channels right on the remote."

So, only one activity has favourites? That would me a no-no for me.

Anyway, getting a replacement from Amazon for my 900 when our foot of snow melts. It is six months old. It has a strange quirk which I am not sure replacements will cure. Nine times out of 10, when you place it on its charging cradle, it enters standby charging mode. Sometimes, however, it doesn't, and appears not to be charging. The slightest movement then causes it to reboot and lose its time setting. Not a killer, but just an annoyance! Why would connecting a charger cause a remote to totally lose power and do a hard reset? Anyone?

I can see now why Logitech is dumping Harmony. Although they replaced the Touch that I didn't buy, direct, they insisted I go back to Amazon for a replacement for the 900 that I did buy. That scared me, because Amazon's stated returns window is 30 days and I wasn't sure whether I would run into the six month statutory warranty deadline with an offshore company like Amazon. Amazon in fact authorized an instant replacement.

Unfortunately, nobody else seems to make any similar remotes! My ideal would be the 900 with flat buttons and a scrolling screen like the Touch. It doesn't look like that will happen.
 
Mike0001 said:
Why would connecting a charger cause a remote to totally lose power and do a hard reset? Anyone?
Click to expand...
It depends how they've implemented the change-over circuits. It doesn't sound like it's been done very well, but good design is the ability/experience to dream up fault scenarios (however unlikely) and see what happens to the proposed design if those events occur. The same is true of hardware and software design, but it's easier to alter software after the design is committed.
 
Black Hole said:
It depends how they've implemented the change-over circuits. It doesn't sound like it's been done very well, but good design is the ability/experience to dream up fault scenarios (however unlikely) and see what happens to the proposed design if those events occur. The same is true of hardware and software design, but it's easier to alter software after the design is committed.
Click to expand...

Is there any reason you might want to disconnect the battery when charging?

Clearly my "use case" of putting the remote on its charger was not foreseen by Logitech. :p
 
Black Hole said:
Yeah, but did the junior engineer they gave this bit to consider dirty contacts?
Click to expand...

I wear specs, but they are dirty. :D

The 785 had a contact problem in that sometimes the connection was not made, but it never actually reset itself. It just failed to charge.

Maybe a USB charger would have been better. They do charge via USB.
 
Having now lived with this remote for nine months I've grown to like it and my old 300 (which I still use for the bedroom) just looks cluttered.

Logitech released a software update last month which solved some remaining niggles and added some nice new features such as separate commands for short and long button presses (so I can now have short OK press sends OK and long press on OK sends OPT+)

The update was pushed as soon as I connected the remote to My Harmony and changed quite a lot about how it works. A problem for anyone who has had to learn its operation by rote.
 
I've just got a Harmony Ultimate remote and though it seems pretty good so far I discovered a niggle with my HDR-Fox-2T, which took me a while to solve.

When I added Option (aka Opt+) and BookmarkList as custom buttons (long press OK and Play buttons) they just would not work. BookmarkList would show the bookmarks but not skip to the next one, and Option just would not work at all.
The solution was to use (or add and use) the Option and BookmarkList functions directly from the Harmony Device menu first. They worked Ok there, and then magically they started working as the custom buttons.
 
Just to add to the above, the custom keys soon stopped working again so I contacted Harmony support. They said that the keys need to be defined under the Activity as well and not just the Device. They did this adn now the keys seem to be working again.
 
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