Media Center PC, Part 2: Logitech Harmony 680

This is the second in a series on experiences using and enhancing Windows XP Media Center for home theater.

To control my Media Center, I have two remote controls: one for the audio system, and one for the Media Center itself. (As mentioned last time, I also use the media control buttons from the Logitech DiNovo media pad as a remote of sorts).  While this is an extremely basic setup - no plasma TV, no audio receiver, no light control - it still seemed like two remote controls for one desk was overkill, and I had a Logitech Harmony 680 on hand to consolidate things.  The 680 is billed as a Media Center PC remote control, and it has a few buttons dedicated to peculiarly Media Center tasks - a big green button to launch the interface, and an "info" button, for example.  Like all Harmony remote controls, the idea is that the remote programs itself based on an online questionnaire you fill out.  This limits the market for their remotes somewhat to people who have Internet connections, but that's certainly not an issue for an XP Media Center remote!

In a brilliant move, the Harmony 680 works as a stock XP Media Center remote control straight out of the box - no connection to a PC required, no configuration.  You do need to put in the batteries, but, in another nice touch, those are also included in the box.

Connecting to the Internet and programming the remote did not go quite as well.  After installing the PC software, and registering and creating an account online, I had trouble getting the site to work properly at all until I noticed that my pop-up blocker seemed to be interfering with key messages the site was sending.  Pop-ups enabled, the software tried to upgrade the firmware on the remote, but ran into problems.  After bouncing around through the "troubleshooting" option, the culprit was discovered: the version of the PC-based software (which connects the remote to the web site) needed to be upgraded, too.  None of this is all that unusual when setting up PC products or interacting with rich web sites, but it is a hazard of combining the two.

That accomplished, the next step was testing the setup. There were two main problems.  First, the remote simply didn't work for listening to the radio using the Media Center.  It seems that the "Listen To Radio" activity defaults to only three or four buttons programmed, which makes changing stations impossible.  This was easy to fix once I found the right menu option in the web setup; all the commands are pre-programmed, they just aren't assigned to the buttons for this particular activity.  Odd.

The other problem is the way Harmony tracks the "state" (on, off) of your components.  With traditional macros (a memorized string of commands), the whole sequence gets thrown out of whack if your DVD player happened to be on when you initiate the "watch a DVD" macro.  The Harmony tries to manage the state of things so that it knows what to turn on, and what not to.  If there's something out of whack, Harmony's narrated help button ("Is your DVD player on?") puts things back in order.  This is one of Harmony's best qualities for controlling a big, dedicated home theater setup, but on a Media Center PC, it was infuriating.  With a Media Center PC, you tend to bounce around a lot between activities, jumping from music listening to recorded TV watching and back. There's really never any need to turn off the "amplifier" (powered speakers, in this case).  In fact, for a PC-based system that's also used as a regular PC, shutting things down is counterproductive - when you're finished with a music or movie session, you still want the speakers on for email alerts and other Windows sounds. 

Shutting down the 680's urge to shut down was similarly easy to do online, once I figured out where in the menu setup this particular option lay.  In fact, that's my primary problem with the Harmony system: initial setup is easy.  Tweaking is actually easy, too.  It's just hard to navigate - the whole system is like a classic PC branching text adventure game from the early 1980s (yes, I know, I'm dating myself).  If you follow the path, you might get where you want.  Or not.  There's no way to see the list of choices and what options reside in which paths.  Logitech needs to spend a little more time working out the user interface kinks of the online site.

With the remote finally set up just the way I wanted, it did indeed replace two separate remote controls, and, thus far, I'm finding it about as easy to use as HP's Media Center remote for basic control.  Some of the HP's remote's buttons are easier to find by feel - the Harmony's buttons are arranged nicely, but all have the same glossy pearl feel to them, so until your fingers learn which button is where, you need to look down at the remote before pressing things. 

Conclusion

The 680 is clearly overkill for my system.  But for a larger system where the Media Center PC is the central hub,or just a small part of the home theater, it may be mandatory.  There are few real competitors: most universal remotes don't have the right button and command structure to control a Media Center PC, and touch screen remotes are both more expensive and far more difficult to program.  Logitech's online setup system does need a little work to make tweaking systems a bit easier, but the basic approach is sound.

In fact, the Harmony approach allows users to control an XP Media Center without explicit programming - just select the Media Center as a device in the questionnairre, and it will work with the 680, or the 688 (which also has dedicated skip forward buttons for use with a TiVo or ReplayTV) or even the new 880 (with a larger and more flexible programmable color screen).  The 880 may be preferred when using a large, widescreen monitor with a Media Center PC, as the soft buttons and screen are used to provide aspect ratio control - another button most universal remote controls lack.  (We have a Harmony 880 in from Logitech; a full review is planned.)

-avi

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