Official Logitech Harmony 900 thread - Page 11

That's funny about the Geek Squad not loading the latest version of the software as I am a Geek Squad home theater installer. I picked up a 900 after work today and I had already dowloaded 7.6 of the software the other day. Unfortunately my boot sector on my pc at home took a dump on me this morning. I'm going to borrow my girlfriends laptop tonight and do some late night programming on it. The box is a lot smaller than the "one" remote which was surprising. I also noticed that logitech shipped out another new remote called the harmony 700. It looked like a weaker version of the one. It seems that these remotes have hit the socal area though if anyone is looking for them.

Quick question. I got my 900 yesterday and am curious if there is any advantage to connecting directly to my receiver and source components. Are the IR in on most components 2.5 mm or 3.5mm? Thanks.

The 700? I've never heard or seen anything about that one.

Most all Components and IR emitters are 3.5mm. The blaster(receiver) that comes with the 900 are 2.5mm. Radio Shack carries mono plugs, as explained in this thread, for converting the 2.5mm to 3.5mm so you can use standard IR emitters and cables with male 3.5mm plugs to connect say and AVR that has a IR in on the back of the receiver.

the advantage of going directly into the component in my case is faster response time and sparing two mini blasters for other uses. i have two 2.5 <-> 3.5 converters as citico described so i can control my cd jukebox and denon receiver each direct in. i also bought two splitters from rs so i have four leads total coming out of one main blaster. it works seamlessly.

Thanks for that info. Excuse my ignorance but, I have never use RF before now. My Integra DTR-9.9 has an "out IR" too. If I connect the Integra via cable to the main blaster, can I connect my OPPO from the Integra and receive all the commands from the 900? Thanks.

Any other early 900 adopters notice that the interface is extremely sluggish? Compared to my One, the screens are very slow to draw. My screen is also very yellowish compared to the One.

RF is working great though. I don't even have the blasters pointing directly at my components and they all respond even more quickly than the IR on the One.

Hoping a firmware update speeds up the interface, otherwise very happy, despite not being able to transfer my devices and activities from the One (reaaaalllly dumb incompatibilty!).

according to the integra 9.9's manual you can:

IR IN A/B and OUT
A commercially available IR receiver can be connected
to the IR IN A or B jack, allowing you to
control the AV receiver while you're in Zone 2, or
control it when it's out of sight, for example,
installed in a cabinet.
A commercially available IR emitter can be connected
to the IR OUT jack to pass IR (infrared)
remote control signals through to other components. i'd give it a try direct into the oppo and see if it works. might also be able to lead out of the receiver with a mini blaster.

my ui is pretty zippy, although the animated transitions aren't as immediate as the one's. i don't have a yellowish tint on the display either. i'd take it back for an exchange if even to compare to a different unit.

i was a h-one early adopter with a brand new unit from bb. the first one i bought had a few numerical buttons dimmed out from a faulty backlight. i was able to exchange it without a hitch.

I'm sure square & wanna could tell you all about the 700. But then they'd have to kill you. Ya know, NDA and such!

Yes, the interface is extremely sluggish compared to the One. I really hope this is fixed, because so far everything else is great. The page transition is unbearably slow for having shelled out $400. When you hit a button to switch page, the screen dims, then switches slowly, then brightens, and its done. Each step feels drawn out.

No yellow tint here though.

no problem. if you have specific questions, let me know
just keep in mind that the mini-blasters plug into the main blaster and they are 2.5mm mono connection

so just keep that in mind when getting the extension cables you might need

I knew they were simultaneously running another beta test along with the 900...and I knew it was an "entry level" remote...but other than that, I didn't know anything else

square and I were busy testing the 900, and I guess they didn't want to bog us down with dual beta testing

From posts at another site the XSight Touch does not require RF extender kit is not required for DIRECTV receivers - it works out of the box. Just have to follow the instructions per the user guide to set the DVR to accept RF and input that code into the remote.

The DirectTV receivers accept RF in - to get an IR signal to other components you will need the RF extender kits

How does it compare all-round to the h900, seen any comparative reviews? Does it have proper sequences?

Cheers

Haven't seen much info, so I'm waiting for user reports like everyone else. But a few reports about the European version (dist. by One-for-all for about a year already), do have some good info. Both have a huge device database. Xsight isn't as good at state tracking and has no help button. So if things get out of sync, you have to figure out how to fix them (probably by running the activity macro again). Some things that trump the 900 are unique profiles for different users and D* RF of course. Conjecture here, but other remotes made by this company typically have 15 step macros, so I'd expect that or better in this model. One user reported success with a 10 step macro. We'll have to wait and see. Keep in mind the xsight plus it's RF base is also cheaper than the 900. UEI makes the xsight and the Nevo line. I don't know if it's programmed similarly to Nevo, but it may give us some clues.

The biggest thing for me is xsight's hacking potential, opening the door to custom config software. We'll have to wait and see there too. But it looks hopeful since UEI also makes JP1 remotes, which are very hackable.

In any case, maybe this will at least give logitech a wake up call, since it's competition can do sequences.

I got my 900 yesterday. I don't see what people are complaining about with the interface. It works great!! It isn't sluggish at all. There is absolutely no delay with the way it responds to key presses either. It is much faster than the ONE. I didn't have to tweak mine at all, like I did the ONE. All the delays were left at the database levels. In fact, the 900 works much better than every of the original remotes that came with my devices.

Any directionality issues that I had with my ONE are now gone. Setting up the RF was a snap. Without reading any directions, the remote itself walks you through the process.

A couple of nice improvements are the lockable screen and the Sleep Timer. The lockable screen allows you to clean the screen (it IS a fingerprint magnet) without causing an unwanted command. What's nice about the sleep time is that it is automatically set up for you as the last Activity. You don't have to go into some options menu to find or activate it.

My only gripe about the remote is the fact you have to set up the remote from scratch. For example , you can't use your old Harmony One's settings and upgrade to the 900. For me, the biggest issue was teaching the 900 commands that I already had taught my ONE. It would have been nice to have just imported form the ONE commands it had learned. (The database had screwed up commands for the Samsung DVD-1080p9 remote) I found the 900 a bit more difficult to teach commands than the ONE. The duration of your key presses on the original remote have to be just right; press the key too long or too short and the 900 won't learn it. The key press duration seems even more critical than the distance between the remotes. (If you have trouble teaching the 900, go for the shorter key press; it worked more often than the longer press.) Therefore, be prepared to spend some time getting this remote set up. For me, however, the effort and time spent was worth it.

I am glad yours is not sluggish. Mine is. Sounds like it's hit or miss. And for $400, I hope a firmware upgrade can and will fix it. Going through the trouble of returning it to amazon for another, and quite possibly getting another sluggish one, does not excite me.

At least Amazon makes returns very easy on the customer.

For those with the remote already, quick couple of questions.

First, how strong are the blasters/mini-blasters? I have read that they are "strong", but does this mean that one blaster could potentially do a whole cabinet, or will you still need at least one blaster per shelf?

Also, I know that because of lack of sequencing, it is not possible to use remote to press one button to, say, pause movie and turn up lights. But would it be possible to have separate buttons within same activity to control lights and movie playback, i.e. so no more than 2 button presses total to pause movie and raise lights. I figure if it gets more complex than that, might as well just use separate remotes.

Cheers.

That would depend on how far apart your components are and whether or not the ir can bounce off any surfaces. I currently have one mini operating two stacked components on an open shelf and it does so with ease.


Yes, you can assign any command you want to any button in any activity as long as the component has been added to that activity. I suppose you could also fake it out 'learning' any ir commands to any component already in an activity.

If you only need a 2-3 command sequence you could also potentially fake it out by 'learning' the multiple ir commands into one button push in raw mode. In that mode it is sometimes possible to 'record' multiple commands in succession.
,r

for anyone with the remote and directv dvrs, does the 900 allow you to do slow motion, previous tick, next tick, beginning and end like the oem remote?

for instance, with the stock d*tv remote you can hold play for about 2-3 seconds and it goes into slowmo, if you do the same with the play button on the one it doesn't do anything. you can hold the play button for 2-3 seconds, let go and quickly press it again and sometimes it will go into slowmo.

this is my one major gripe about my one. no amount of learning commands in raw or anything else seemed to get this to work. logitech even added soft buttons to my remote that were supposed to work, but were really just the stock play, ff, rw etc buttons in raw.

if it can do this i'll be thoroughly pleased!

I have one blaster on a shelf between 2 stacks of 2 components.
I have a miniblaster on the shelf above just for the TV. I haven't tried the blaster alone to see if it would take care of the TV, but it might. Now that everything is working so well, and I still have a left over mini-blaster, I probably won't bother trying to eliminate the other. When I first ordered this remote, I was concerned that these blasters and miniblasters would take up room in front of my components. They are amazingly small and hardly noticable except for the tiny LED's on them that tell you they are powered up and receiving ok. They provide some double stick tape to fix them in place.

I actually have tried two of these 900 remotes. Neither were sluggish in the least. I returned one of them because I thought there was something wrong with the way it was learning new commands. It turns out there was nothing wrong with it. (I didn't realize how critical the correct duration of the button press on the original remote was to the learning of the command. If you hold the button down too long on the original remote, the 900 doesn't read the signal at all. Both remotes were the same in this regard.)

I would call Logitech and perhaps they'll just send you another. Perhaps they will check out the replacement for you so you don't get another slow one. Still, I don't think firmware will fix something that is only sporadic in some of these remotes. Perhaps the beta testers can comment, too, on this.

Thanks for responses Squareeyes & wtwieder. Good to know info before you spend this sort of money.

900 uses the same database as all other harmony's, so those commands won't be there. However, I've added all of the above to mine, but it required programming the commands into another universal and using that to teach the harmony. Works beautifully. I just posted the procedure HERE on the logitech forums.

I won't need the RF extender if my other IR components are visible.

i wonder if we can give logitech the discrete codes then to either add o the database or request they add them directly to our accounts.

If you send Harmony the hex codes, they can convert the hex format to IR and add the discrete command(s) to your account. I have done this on several occasions.