Logitech to sell off Harmony division

[staknhalo]

http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/23/logi ... y-remotes/

[SilverRubicon]

Logitech has done nothing to advance Harmony remotes. This may be a good thing, but it depends on who acquires them. Maybe someone with a competent designer that won't place transport controls on the top edge of the remote above the display.

[adam1991]

this comes as no surprise. I bought a refurb 300 to replace my well-worn and not operating well 2 year old 300, and gasped when I went to Logitech's site and saw what their Harmony business had degraded into.

I might buy and program another 300 right away, to have as a spare. Maybe three of them, one for each TV setup.

[STC]

Logitech has done nothing to advance Harmony remotes. This may be a good thing, but it depends on who acquires them. Maybe someone with a competent designer that won't place transport controls on the top edge of the remote above the display.

You're being too nice

[Motz]

Hopefully someone will pick it up and make a worthy new harmony. I love my harmony, I think they are solid overall with the higher end models like the harmony one.

[STC]

^ They did (read: used to) make promising remotes, but their support infrastructure is not so good. erkotz is still trying to get the Echo listed as a device with them. I absolutely hate their One programming app. Talk about duplicating actions.

[carljanderson]

Hopefully someone will pick it up and make a worthy new harmony. I love my harmony, I think they are solid overall with the higher end models like the harmony one.

They dropped the ball with the Harmony Touch, IMO. The ONE was, and still is, and excellent remote.

My first ONE did start dying with buttons not working, etc. so I figured I would try the Touch. For $250 I expect a lot, and it failed to deliver. I didn't like the layout, didn't like the fact that there was no SKIP and REV, and the deal breaker (for me) was I couldn't program the number pad on any activity other than Watch TV. I happen to have XM on my AVR (I also happen to still use CD's and occasionally jump to a song number), so I needed that functionality. After a call with Harmony Support, they were are aware of the issue and working on a fix with no ETA.

I returned the touch the next day, and found a ONE.

[makryger]

Its funny, i feel like it wasn't too long ago where logitech proudly announced their redesign of the harmony remotes.

I feel like logitech has some good technology they could have leveraged for the harmony remotes (the rf stuff), but they dropped the ball. I'll stick with my rf gyration remote, thank you very much.

[Motz]

I think the touch was probably just a throw away, someone had an idea and was like we haven't come out with a remote in a while. I have the harmony for xbox 360 and love it. A friend has the one and love it as well. Will be interested to see what happens next

[Sammy2]

Hopefully someone will pick it up and make a worthy new harmony. I love my harmony, I think they are solid overall with the higher end models like the harmony one.

Hmmm. If there were just some CE company that might want a new product line.. Hmmm, Motz you wouldn't happen to know of one would you?

[spanner]

Love my harmony remotes, 550 and and 620. without them my wife wouldn't let me have the type of setup i have. Activity based remotes are the way to go. The last 2 times i tried to update my remotes there were server issues that made it near impossible. I hope someone new can but new life into the software and hardware

[tony_park]

So, with Harmony remotes likely to not be an option for much longer, what other options are there? What do other people recommend?

We're starting to have problems with our 700, with some of the number keys taking a really hard press to register - the numbers all seem to be in a line, for example 3 6 9, so considering replacements currently. Fortunately we don't tend to use the number keys very often.


Thanks
Tony

[mdavej]

URC
JP1
Xsight

I tried harmony for a while and none came anywhere close to the above.

That said, I don't see this as bad news at all. The new buyer may actually know what they're doing. I don't see how anyone can do more damage to Harmony than Logitech has already done. After steady progress for several years after buying Harmony from it's original creator (Harmony wasn't Logitech's idea), something strange happened at Logitech that made them start going backwards. They systematically started undoing every advance they had made over the years, making harmony practically unusable to me.

First came the 900/1100 and the removal of macro (sequence) capability, Z-wave, and multi-zone. Then they continued removing features and devices in the 600/650/700 (the old 6xx and 7xx series had 12-15 devices, the new ones only 5-6). Then they strangely limited the 200/300 to only one macro although it could have 4 devices. And the final insult was the myharmony.com programming website which not only removed sequences (macros), but many other features like pronto hex import, adjustment of delays and repeats, ability to add more steps to activity macros and even the ability to change the backlight time. It's mind boggling to me how a company with Logi in the name can be so illogical. Every other consumer electronics item on the planet improves with each generation. Only logitech has gone backwards.

So I say good riddance to Logitech. Maybe someone who's actually used a universal remote before will buy them and put them back on track.