I had a harmony 520 that really functioned well for my D* home theater setup...until the buttons stopped performing. I never really liked the mushy feel of the rubber buttons anyway, but despite the awkward feel the remote performed pretty well and I really like the activity buttons.

I'm looking for a replacement remote and I'm considering the harmony 510 and the Harmony One.

Should I look at others? I spend most of my time on the D* guide and menu and hd-dvr play controls so I want that stuff centrally located. I'm not crazy about the location of these controls on the 510 but the One seems to have them well placed and an overall better layout.

I'd be interested to hear from users of these two remotes (and others) who are using the D* HD receivers...

The harmony xbox 360 is my favorite cheap remote for D*, although it's quite similar to the 510. The 700 is even better.

http://media.teamxbox.com/dailyposts/hardware/logitech_harmony.jpghttp://www.purepc.pl/files/Image/news/2009/09/Logitech_Harmony_700_01.jpg

Interesting, Too bad I have a PS3 or that would be perfect. I like the look of the buttons on the xbox remote. Are they rubber or plastic? The 520 buttons are way to soft and spongy.

Interesting, Too bad I have a PS3 or that would be perfect. I like the look of the buttons on the xbox remote. Are they rubber or plastic? The 520 buttons are way to soft and spongy.
Unfortunately, they're rubbery like the 520. But it will work the PS3 (via an IR adapter) just like any other harmony would. There's no difference besides the extra row of colored buttons.

I don't have an xbox either. But I do have lots of devices with colored buttons, which makes this remote a good fit.

Well I suppose I could map those extra colored buttons to my D* colored buttons.

What about the 700? Do you have both? What are some features it has that the xbox remote lacks?

I don't have a 700, but I know the main differences are it has a color LCD, rechargeable battery, hard activity buttons and up to 23 favorites (I use rechargeables in my 360 anyway, and I make favorites using sequences). On the downside it's only 6 device vs. the 360 which is 12 (that's a deal breaker for me). A 700 is close to $150. A refurb 360 is much less. I paid $30 each for all my 360's a while back, but I haven't seen a deal like that in quite a while. 360's on ebay were going for $50-$70 last time I checked.

Does any Harmony have buttons that don't feel cheap and rubbery and don't easily get stuck?

Does any Harmony have buttons that don't feel cheap and rubbery and don't easily get stuck?Not that I know of. That's my biggest complaint about them. The 700 looks promising, but I've never tried one. They have a great system but terrible execution on the hardware side. The low end remotes like the 500 series have the worst of both worlds - half spongy, the other half hard to press with a loud click, and nothing in between. They need to take a page from URC's playbook and learn how to make a decent keypad. As expensive as these remotes are, there's no excuse for a cheap keypad.

The 700 is a great remote. I just bought one to replace an older 880 that is on its way out. The 880 is just over a year old, so that tells you about the build quality on those. The 880 has buttons that stopped working no matter what I did to try to fix them. The 700 has a great build quality and although the buttons are rubber, they respond much better than the buttons on the 880 it is replacing. I also have a Harmony One that I use with my main setup. Also a great remote. The buttons on the One are not rubber.

I just picked up a refurbished 670 for $50. Previous to that I used a Universal URC-200. What a difference. The 670 was actually fun and quick to set up. Very happy with it so far. YMMV

Wow, reading through the forums it sounds like I am in the minority in that I prefer the look and feel of the 500 series remotes over most of the other Harmony line :)

Anyway I have a 550 that I originally bought for use with my system and a TW DVR. I have since switched to DirecTV and continue to use the 550. My only complaint is having the color buttons on the LCD instead of dedicated buttons. I am now in need of another remote to control a second system and would like to keep the new one similar to the 550. My choices as I see them are pretty limited 510, 520, 550 or xBox.

Does anybody actually use the (harmony) xbox remote with a DirecTV DVR? How does it handle the yellow and red buttons being dual purpose?

Wow, reading through the forums it sounds like I am in the minority in that I prefer the look and feel of the 500 series remotes over most of the other Harmony line :)

Anyway I have a 550 that I originally bought for use with my system and a TW DVR. I have since switched to DirecTV and continue to use the 550. My only complaint is having the color buttons on the LCD instead of dedicated buttons. I am now in need of another remote to control a second system and would like to keep the new one similar to the 550. My choices as I see them are pretty limited 510, 520, 550 or xBox.

Does anybody actually use the (harmony) xbox remote with a DirecTV DVR? How does it handle the yellow and red buttons being dual purpose?The 510 has colored buttons too, but is only 5 device compared to the xbox's 12. In spite of it's mix of spongy and clicky buttons, the harmony xbox remote is actually my favorite and works great with DirectTV. Like any harmony, any button can have any function, so the colored ones are no problem. The only issue is you have to assign the functions yourself because none of the colored ones get mapped automatically for some reason. Since I rarely use blue, I put my commercial skip sequence on it (three 30sec skips, so I press it twice). FWIW, I don't even have an xbox. When I saw refurb xbox harmony's for $30 I while back, I got several.