Acoustic Research XSight Remote - Page 2

fair enough, still keen to hear from those who've had time for lengthy comparisons.

Cheers

Are there any remotes that can control the Blu Ray on the PS3? Also can someone please explain the need for macros to a novice like myself?

Besides the sony remote, only the ones that come with the converters/adapters. No universal remotes can. Nyko makes a simple IR remote for about $15 that controls the PS3. It comes with a USB dongle that plugs into the PS3. The remote sends IR to the dongle and the dongle sends commands to the PS3. A universal remote can send the same IR as the Nyko and, hence, replace it. You're still sending IR to the dongle though. The Nyko doesn't do everything, and other adapters may be better or more functional, but the principle is the same - converting an IR signal to something the PS3 can understand.

Think of a macro like speed dial on your phone. Instead of pressing 7 buttons to call someone, you press one. Imagine you have to press 7 buttons to dig through the menus on your tv in order to toggle captions, for example. That's a perfect application for a macro. You can put those 7 commands on a single button. Logitech would rather you make activities like "Watch TV with captions" and "Watch TV without captions". While it's true you can put those 7 commands in the activities, why should you have to make a whole activity when a sequence is so simple? What if you want to toggle captions several times while you're in your "Watch TV" activity? A sequence allows you to do that very easily. If you don't mind pressing those 7 buttons every time you want to toggle captions, then you'll never use or miss sequences. But a universal remote's main purpose in life is to save you from pressing a lot of buttons. That's precisely what sequences do. Why logitech would purposely remove a perfectly good feature like this, I'll never understand.

Thanks for expounding for me. I now understand.

The cheaper ARRX15G doesn't have RF, doesn't have rechargable batteries and doesn't have touch. I miss the rechargables, but then I got this thing on eBay for about $80....

Anyway, I have played with the 15G for a few days now, and can report that, in IR, it can be made to serve as a single macro-based system remote. It also has activites, but these are wizard-generated macros, which you can edit after.

Which is a good thing because the web-based Wizard has serious problems, not the least of which is occasional mistakes in codesets. After giving me many choices of Denon AVR3808CI codesets depending on Zone, it then assigned me something that was from maybe a 2803. That kind of thing. It also has issues with alternate unit codes, such as multiple DVR boxes or DVD/Blu combinations from the same manufacturer. It has advanced modes and you can eventually set up nearly anything, but GODS is it tedious.

Being web-based, every step in every setup sequence needs to go back and forth to some distant place and so it moves like molasses. Click-wait click-wait. Gahhh. A downloadable version, please.

But. I've been looking to replace my hacked to death Radio Shack 15-1994(s) for some time now. Too many macros on too many keys known only to me and God. No color keys, no DVR controls, etc. But great key placement, great feel, long macros on any key, and quite a bit of community support. And a good backlight. Great remote, just getting creaky.

This thing can be made to do everything the 15-1994 does, and more (twice the devices). Yes, it is tedious and the database is buggered, but programming the 1994 is no picnic either.

And yes, it will control at least 2 DirecTV HR2x boxes in IR. Just expect to work for it.

Nevo is getting this remote also. I spotted a banner ad and recognized the remote in it. I went to post about it and found that everyone else beat me to it : http://www.remotecentral.com/cgi-bin...thread.cgi?954

Good to know, I'm not afraid of a whole lot of pain for some good gain
How come you passed over the RF version?

Cheers

Is it possible to add custom pictures/logos to use on the display?

I've been playing around with the XSight Touch (ARX18G) and if you have exactly one device that tunes channels you may be OK with this remote. If you have more than one device, though ... :nono:

To me it's really only geared to a family that has one device for changing channels. You can only create favorites for one device and then you can create profiles to use those favorites, but I have a TV, cable box and DVR in one room, all of which have different channel locations for ABC, for example, so I have to pick one to use for favorites - I can't have three sets.

The macros are easy to set up but the problem with them is if you assign them to a soft key you see the name of the macro, you can't customize the label. If I wanted a macro for CC I'd need three macros as I have three HR20s and each macro has to send commands for the specific IR set of each HR20. This means I have to have unique macro names and those names would be displayed in the touch screen.

You can't even really customize the placement of soft-keys, as it fills in the screen from the bottom up and you can't override that.

Also, the device and activity screen share the same layout, so if you only want four commands in activity mode and 20 in device mode ... too bad. You will see all 20 in activity mode as well.

The Harmony has a HELP button, and I thought the XSight did not - but it has a soft-button labeled "Assist" - and it takes up the top row of your Activities screen, pushing your carefully placed keys off the page, so you are screwed - you can't have them where you want in both Device and Activity mode.

Finally, the worst thing is that when you power off it does NOT return to the Home screen - it stays in whatever mode you were: Favorites, Activity, device. That's just wrong.

On paper the features sound great, but in practice it's quite flawed if you want to control multiple tuning devices.

Hmm not sounding too crash hot...

Ender21, how's the comparison between your H900 and Xsight going?
Are you more happy with one remote than the other?

Hopefully you'll have a bit more time to 'play' on the weekend

Cheers

What sort of programming does it have? Is it wizard based via PC or is it all done on the remote itself? I can live with naming the macros differently but what the heck is up with it not returning to the home page after the system is turned off? Are you positive this isnt just something you missed? It sounds so impossible i cant believe it .

No.

And after some experimentation I have a few rants regarding the programmers who botched several parts of the firmware/web setup.

You can get it to work for a reasonably complicated system (all sources of a Denon 3808ci filled). But OMG the trouble that you have to smash out of the way.

Examples:

• The Activities use softkey functions, but index them by POSITION not by function. Reorder the device softkeys and everything breaks.
  
• Any Activity causes a double-wide (and largely useless) softkey called "Assist" (aka "help") to displace the target device's softkeys "south". So the lower two first-page softkeys are pushed to the second page and so forth.
  
• The main power button is not assigned during Activity invocation, but is stuck on the last device directly selected. For things that do not have discretes, like most DVD players, this is a pain and a half. Usually you have to create a power softkey.
  
• Macros cannot assign key-sections to devices (e.g. transport controls to blu-ray), so you cannot use macros to bypass the activity setup.
  
• There s no direct way to indicate unit number if you happen to have 2 or more of something. You must use codesearch techniques to find the codes for higher unit numbers. I have a Panny Bluray and a Panny DVD, as well as two DirecTV DVRs. Made it work, but a chore.

Personally, the people who wrote the firmware have no fracking idea what they are doing OR the web software interfaces with the firmware abysmally. OR maybe both. After 30 years writing real-time embedded code, I just get ill when I think of how moronic the software design is.

Saved only by a really good hardware design, complete code base, and capabilities that still work after clueless crippling.

Actually you can push them around their page, but if there are activites that reference them, well, the reference was done by POSITION at the time the activity was set up. So move them (or delete something), and you break the activity.

Note above how much I favor their programming team. Fracking morons!!1!!11!!

You use either a web-based setup or a remote-based setup, but you have a problem if you try to merge the two later. One version will overwrite the other -- requires some planning.

I think that if you use the "Good Night" Activity to shut down, you are left on the first page of the activities menu -- there is a HOME statement at the end of the macro. Don't know if drew is doing it that way.

You can only push them "so far" though... If you want to have a soft-button in the top right corner, for example, with nothing below or to the left, you can't do that as the software fills in the positions from the bottom of the screen up and all soft-buttons have to be contiguous.

I didn't mention this earlier, but moving the soft-buttons around is like playing one of those scramble puzzles where you can only move one position at a time up, down, left, or right - and each move causes another soft-button to be moved and you have to plan where you want things and then get frustrated by it all. :nono:

Sounds like this remote is like alot of stuff these days. Decent hardware, but horrible software!

If they don't radically improve the software or release an API so the remote can be programmed without the web interface I think I'll pass on this remote.

Ender you still around? Hope you haven't gone MIA
Would love to hear some further comparisons between your h900 & Xsight

yeah starting to sound like a real disappointment software wise.
Now I've even less of an idea what to get...

1) Did not need RF (or touch, really).
2) $80 new on eBay vs $200+

We'll see how fast it eats batteries....

That goes double for me!

I wonder how the xsight touch would compare to my harmony 720? I'm considering getting one since the price is right. Would you owners say that after programming the remote works satisfactory? It seems like the biggest complaints are for the programming/software.

Jalyst, I apologize! I did indeed go MIA. I did the primary equipment/rack/projector/screen install in my HT, as well as remote programming, Cat6 cable termination, etc., plus my son's 1st birthday was last week, and that came with obligatory family visiting, so my abilities to experiment and post were spotty at best!

At any rate, I did not delve into the XSight as much as Drew2K did, so I would most certainly defer to him. I believe with a lot of tweaking I could have become satisfied with it, but the touch pads were too sensitive, and the slider bar to go from page to page was too unreliable for me, so I returned it before I got as far in as Drew did. On more superficial notes, the feel of the buttons made it less-than-intuitive to go by touch only, and the loud click every time you pressed a button grew annoying.

A buddy of mine who is a Nevo dealer browbeat me into trying the Q50 so I've gone that route instead, and while the learning curve for programming is somewhat high, I'm much more satisfied with the Q50 than I was with the XSight (considering the price difference, I had better be!) An aside, it's widely known now that the Nevo C2/C3 remotes are just rebadged XSights, which makes sense since they're all UEI products.

I did not try the Harmony 900. I knew going in I'd miss the macro-ability, and when I went to pick it up from Best Buy they had no RF extenders, so I just bypassed that option.

Anyway, that's my lackluster review. Sorry again I dawdled so much!

Rick

P.S. The XSight did do a great job with my DirecTV receivers. So if you want a simpler set up and RF control over those, you can do that pretty easily, and it appears you can even control more than one in the same room.

Do you mean you can control more than one over RF? Although you can control multiple boxes via IR, everything I've read says only one can be set up with RF. If you've been able to do more than one via RF, how did you do it?

Thanks

Eesh, here we get into a gray area of my testing as I basically just did a one-off to see if it worked and then didn't touch the remote again prior to uninstall and return.

I programmed 1 DirecTV receiver into the remote, then enabled RF on the remote itself. Along the way it asked for the pin for that receiver, so I plugged it in. The device setting for that receiver then worked. Then I went to set up the second receiver and followed the same drill. I plugged that receiver's pin into the XSight and voila, control over that receiver.

What I didn't do was go back to specifically bounce between both receivers to be 100% sure both worked. It's entirely possible that activating the second receiver deactivated the first.

Sorry guys, there should probably be independent verification that this works as we'd like it.

Rick

Thanks ender, I'm not very impressed with it overall...

By all accounts it sounds as though there's too much hacking needed out-of-the-box for what's a rather pricey device.

I'm going to have a look at this Nevo you speak of, thanks again for chiming in!

Oh so the Xsight is just a rebadged UEI (makers of Nevo) remote? Intriguing...

So how's the Q50 been?
Any significant caveats or are you mostly a happy camper?

I'm seriously considering it along with remotes in a similar price bracket from URC, & Phillips...
I'll definitely by buying overseas as we get totally reamed with pricing for a lot of tech in Oz

I like the Q50. It's reliable, consistent, I like the feel of the buttons. There *are* a few caveats, yes.

The Q50's battery can't be user replaced (think ipod), though the S70's can.

There is too much reliant on the touch screen for my taste, though that's subjective. But there are still plenty of hard keys for me to use so that's been good.

The remote control database could use some updating. The Oppo BDP83 remote, while in their database, has buttons for functions that don't exist on any blu-ray player at all and it's not the only device that is like this.
The Planar 8150 projector has been out for about 2 years now, but yet there's no codeset in the databse for it. So I had to manually learn all the commands through the remote. But thankfully Nevo did a good job of making learning commands as easily as possible.

Controlling two DirecTV DVRs via IR within the "Advanced Remote Setup" screen in the DVRs themselves has shown just as doable as the direct RF control through the XSight.

It would be nice if there were a few helper wizards to assist in building an activities-based setup. The learning curve is somewhat steep, but once I have my foundation down, tweaking isn't so bad.

Z-Wave is cool. I have gotten z-wave dimmers and implemented them in my setup and use them frequently. And due to the high temp and extra insulation in the walls, I may invest in a z-wave thermostat as well!

So far almost all of it has been good. Hopefully Nevo takes the revenue they gain from the higher cost of units and accessories and pumps that back into the guts of the units to make them better and better.

Rick

Thanks Ender, intriguing!

Didn't your DVR's have built-in RF receivers compatible with the Q50?
I spose even now most appliances don't implement RF-based receivers, IR is still king! etc.

Do you know a good resource on the differences between all the RF protocols specifically for HA?
There seems to be a mixture & choosing a remote that supports the best of them or a couple seems pretty important.

Why isn't plain old 2.4Ghz 802.11n used? Is it too much unnecessary bandwidth/power draw?

did you get this? decided to forget UR for a while...
there are other far more important components I need to get & I just cant afford to spend $400+ on a decent UR.
UR although a great convenience are really just that.

One of the strangest things on the remote is volume lock. Although this is totally customizable in activities, for some reason several soft buttons and config screens on the remote are dedicated to some global volume lock that operates outside of activities. This totally unnecessary holdover from other one-for-alls makes no sense on this remote. It gets overridden by activities anyway. Go figure.

Programming and learning takes lots of planning:
- If you learn a button on a particular page, it's on that page forever.
- You can't create another page until all the previous pages are full.
- All soft buttons are created last to first. So you have to work backwards to avoid moving buttons around. This is especially frustrating when making favorites lists.
- If you don't upload before downloading, your learns are wiped out. And you have to exit the software completely and start again to even see the option to upload.
- You can move soft buttons around on a page, but to move them to another page, you have to delete them add them back. Each of these movements takes a LONG time. And if you edit the button text too fast, it crashes and you lose all your edits.
- If you don't have discrete on/off for all your devices you're out of luck. This remote does no device state tracking.

On the plus side, they actually do a few things better than harmony:
- You control exactly what goes on in your activities, not what the wizard thinks should go on.
- You have customizable delays for each step in a macro and can have more than 5
steps.
- The Help (Assistant) function presents you with a list of all the steps in your activity so you can choose which step to repeat.
- The software actually shows a picture of the remote so you can see the buttons and click the ones you want to edit.
- You can mostly bypass the setup wizard when you want to make changes.

If you come from harmony there are some things you have to do differently:
- If you leave an activity screen, the only way to get back is to run the activity again. I find myself blocking the IR with my hand a lot to avoid problems.
- Learns have to be initiated on the remote, not the software, and you have to remember to upload them when you're done.

The problem with harmony and xsight is the stupid web based software. Give me drag and drop, and a few menus on a real, standalone application that runs fast. (I know harmony has standalone, but it runs as slow as the web config). Don't make me wait 15 seconds every time I click a button and require several confirmation clicks for one simple operation. My guess is the worst guy on the harmony software team probably got fired, and one-for-all hired him to design their software. In any case, whoever designed it has no earthly idea how a remote is used or is supposed to work. I wish harmony and one-for-all would hire developers who have at least seen and used a remote before.

Bottom line is if you have a simple setup and don't do much customizing, you may actually like this remote. Otherwise, harmony is a much more functional, better designed and mature product over all.

For now, I'll stick with harmony. If anyone wants a really good deal on an xsight color, PM me. My loss is your gain.