Quote:
I wonder if a Harmony could be cobbled together to support the kludge I was using in grad school. My TV had one S-Video input, which I was feeding from my S-VHS VCR (no DVD players were yet on the market). My roommate's PlayStation-1 also had a S-Video output, which I routed through the S-Video input of the VCR (which, sadly, had to tune to channel 3 to get its input from the awful, mandatory cable box). This meant that selecting video inputs happened by tweaking the VCR while selecting audio inputs happened from the receiver (which had composite video switching, but not S-Video). We got by with a learning remote, but it would have been completely unusable for anybody visiting us.

Yes. You set up "Activities" in the remote, and an activity can have multiple devices. The activity for "Play Game" would include the TV, the VCR and the receiver (and the PS1, but it has no IR input), and the settings for each would be programmed into the Harmony. The remote would select all the correct settings for the devices to be on when it powers them up.

I have a Receiver, Component Video switch, DVD Recorder, Xbox, Cable DVR, iPod dock and HDTV, and all the inputs are different for each action. It would be insanely complex and time consuming to manage all of them without a suitable remote, not to mention that I've had poor luck getting any so-called "universal" remote to know ALL the codes for my devices.

Watching a DVD: TV to HDMI input, DVD recorder on, Receiver to DVD coax input
Watching DVR: TV to component input, Video Switch to Cable, DVR on, Receiver to cable input
Playing Video Game: TV to component input, Video Switch to Xbox, Receiver to VCR1 input
Listening to iPod: Receiver to CD input, dock on, everything else off.

The remote makes doing this so easy that my 4 year old can watch TV without my help. He can even turn on the iPod and listen to music without asking me to help him.

And, the Harmony 880 already knows the Empeg IR codes. You can look up the Empeg in their configuration tool under Audio Servers. How cool is that?
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Mark Cushman