Harmony 676 universal remote

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Harmony 676Until now, I’d been sticking with the cheaper universal remote controls. My favorite was the Magnavox PMDVR-8 which did a great job of controlling all of my home theater devices, including my TiVos. Recently, however, I had two of the units go bad. I was going to just replace it with the same, but was lured by the Logitech Harmony 676 Advanced Universal Remote. I guess it was time to see what all the buzz was about with these $200+ URCs.

So far, I love it. You use a web site to configure your device, answering a series of questions about what devices you have. No need to go searching through a list of codes to program the remote, just set it up on the web site, and then download via the supplied USB cable. You can customize all of the hard buttons, plus 6 “soft” buttons on either side of the LCD display.

The Harmony 676 is activity based, meaning you set up an activity like “Watch a DVD” or “Watch TiVo.” Using the web site, you define each activity such as turn on the TV, switch to component input, turn on the DVD player, start playing the disc. Then, with one button push, you can accomplish that activity … very cool!

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