Harmony 700 - Page 15

Man, once I get this remote to perform all functions of my individual remotes, this will kick a$$. Getting there, is quite a tedious journey though.

Yeah... but once you get it done, you won't have to mess with it again until you buy or replace equipment!

Isn't it fun

Harmony is definitely the only way to go with a home theater system.

You may want to look for discrete pic format modes for your set. If not already in the Harmony code list, search over on RemoteCentral forums -- specifically their Discrete Hunter section. Maybe post a request over there if you don't see anything.

If you do get some, you can use the online help in the Harmony to contact them and have them add it to your set of codes you can use. I had them do that for some of my stuff.

Thanks for the info pixelman. Managed to get format modes programmed, but still haven't worked out all the kinks yet. One other problem I have noticed, is if I have selected Watch a movie, and then after, say I want to watch Tv, I press the activity Watch Tv and instead of switching to Component 2(Sat hook up), it switches to Air 3, which has nothing?? I have to end up pushing the Help button to sort it out. I hope you don't have to do this every single time you switch activities.

That sounds like another 'needs discrete code' issue... Does it have direct-input buttons (check extra buttons and all the codes...)

My cousin has one of these. He's just gonna give it to me. Are these still good for todays market? Being that I see that the harmony controls are over model number 1000 and this is a 700.

Yes, still a current model, came out in Sept 09, and actually newer than the 1000 which came out in April 08, and the 1100 in Feb 09. The 300, 600 and 650 are actually the newest ones. The model number generally refers to the amount of features / price, not release date.

But some people prefer the 700 over others because of the battery options, and some don't want the touch-screen of the One.

This is a great link comparing all the features of every Harmony remote, if you're interested.

Well, happy to report that I managed to fix the settings for watching Tv after doing another activity. I had to manually add the Air input into the remote settings inputs, and then bypass it when switching activities. Bit of a roundabout way of doing things, but it finally works now. Now that everything is up and running, I have to say...Wow. What a fantastic piece of kit! Now I understand why people say the their Harmony remote is one of the best/most important part of their home entertainment system. Another satisfied Harmony owner.

You will damage your remote if you use anthing other than the same spec as the OEM recharegable batteries. If your remote is not correctly recharging the OEM batteries, and your unit is still under warrenty, contact Logitech Support and they will replace the batteries (if that is indeed the issue). I say that because the batteries may not be recharging for other reasons (i.e., hardware issue with remote, bad cable, etc.). I suggest to not tell Logitech you have been using regular batteries or they may tell you that you have voided your warrenty.

I do the same thing with my remote and it works well. However, I use the OEM batteries and a set of identical spec batteries (AA R6 Ni-MH, min. 1800 mA) in a recharging unit made for Ni-MH batteries.

Agreed. Download software and begin using it to program your remote. Post back and I'm sure we can help you navigate the procedure for getting to where you want to go.

Also, connecting your audio out from your tv to your receiver is usually not the preferred way as most tv's only output stereo so using a digital cable is overkill. Try connecting your source device to the receiver using the digital cable for audio to enjoy surround if your setup is capable of producing.

That's not quite true in most cases. You should always connect the TV audio out to receiver using digital cable. It's cheap. More importantly, most TV broadcast HD programs are in DD 5.1. Digital cable will pass DD 5.1 from those broadcast programs to the receiver. Some newer HDTV can also route DD 5.1 sources from DVD,Blu-ray,... to the receiver.

I believe the real issue is most TV's now will not pass DD surround sound out the TV optical output if the source is connected to an HDMI input of the TV. But the TV will pass DD surround sound out the optical output if the source is the TV's internal tuner. This is the way my Panasonic G20 works.

This is due in part to the movie industry's desire to not have digital data from a disc player pass through an unsecure port like a TOSLINK optical output.

So there are two common situations:

(a) You don't have a cable box. In this case, use the TV optical out to listen to surround broadcasts.

(b) You have a cable box. In this case, connect the cable box's output to an HDMI input on your receiver to listen to surround broadcasts. If the cable box was connected to an HDMI input on the TV, then the optical out would downmix surround broadcasts to stereo.

Hope that makes sense.

That is not my understanding and not been my experience but if it works for you, great. Although I don't see any advantage to send the audio signal through the tv only to then send it to the receiver, unless your interested in using the tv's speakers as an option. In that case, most would recommend sending the audio and video digitally to tv via hdmi, and connecting a second cable for digital audio from source device (either coax or optical) to the receiver. The only limitation there is that coax and optical can only carry 5.1 and cannot transmit the higher end lossless surround sound formats like Dolby True HD and DTS HD Master Audio. For that you have to use HDMI all the way from source to receiver.

In my experience cable box's don't play nice with tv's and receivers when connected by HDMI due to handshake issues and audio dropout. Other devices don't seem to have same problem.

I've had this remote for about 6 month and really like it, however, I can never get it to shut down my Optima HD20 without using the help button. I use everything off option and I have played with the delay settings and what not.

Any advice would be great.

I had the same problem, albeit with different components...xbox wouldn't turn on. I seemed to have fixed the problem by deleting the activity, then reloading it and then syncing the remote. This worked for me.

Did Harmony do a firmware update on the 700 which increases the number of devices you can control? I just logged into my Harmony acct and it states that I have 5 devices currently connected, and that can add 3 more!! Has anyone heard anything about this, or is it a glitch?

This is normal. The 700 is 6 device with the stand-alone software, or 8 device on myharmony.com. But using myharmony.com will cost you the loss of sequences, the ability to add more than 5 activities, the ability to adjust your backlight time and delays and repeats, and the ability to rearrange activities. Pick your poison.

Well you have to apply firmware updates they don't magically happen :-) so if you did apply a recent FW update there should've been a changelog

The device limit hasn't changed in any firmwares. It's always been essentially unlimited in firmware but limited in software. My 700 has had 12 devices from day 1 because I upgraded from a 12 device remote. Beyond that, the standalone software limits you to 6 devices, myharmony limits you to 8. It's a purely artificial limit to force you to a more expensive model if you have lots of devices.

Interesting. I have 6 devices(5 already hooked up and 1 pending), so I will not go the 8 devices route right now. I like the flexibility of moving things around right now, and wouldn't like the more restrictive menu set up going with 8 devices should I need to add more. I will prob go with a remote upgrade, which I guess is exactly what Harmony would want. But for now, the 700 suits my needs perfectly.

One other question. How do I do a firware upgrade in safe mode? I managed to get the remote into safe mode, but, on the MyHarmony site, I can't find the download tab? The help section states that it is in the top right hand corner, but on my window, it isn't there.

Does anyone know if the Harmony icon site still works? I tried to sign up today, but when I tried to email Randall, it wouldn't go through.

I didn't even know it was possible to sign up. Downloading icons still works fine for me. It is summer, so he could be on vacation. You could just PM him here if it's urgent. He posts quite often in many of the harmony threads.

joe, sorry for late reply. it's been up and running. it was down for about 1/2 hour over two late nights for server updates, but other than that it's good to go. let me know if you're still having issues. best, rc

Thanks squareeyes, I must have hit it when it was down... But I was able to access it later that night. Managed to download some great icons. You have done some first rate work. Excellent! Thanks

Will I be happy with a 700 if I'd been using a JP1 remote? I have the OFA 8910 and used the JP1 programming to get this to do some basic stuff through macros. My video was completely upgraded, Oppo 93, Panny 50GT25 and Sci Atl 8900, from older standard def stuff, but I don't have the JP1 programs readily available as they were on my old Win98 computer, long ago relegated to the scrap heap.

With all the flexibility of JP1, I still only used basic macros, but built one keymap for an otherwise unsupported device. Will the 700 handle everything I have and do basic turn on and device/input switching? Will it be able to handle "Watch Netflix" by going to the Oppo and selecting the multitude of button presses and delays (like waiting for the wireless network to connect?) How many activities does it support anyway?

And one other question that isn't specific to the 700, do my devices all have discrete codes? I know my Outlaw receiver does NOT, but everything else I had in the past did.

Overall it will work fine. If you make "Watch Netflix" an activity, you can add all the extra commands and delays between each step that you need. Activity macros will handle all your device power on and input switching. There is no practical limit to the number of activities if you use the stand-alone software. Myharmony.com on the other hand is very limited (6 activities IIRC). The biggest limitation IMO is one-button macros that harmony calls sequences. So if you want to put a string of commands on a button without having to build an activity, you are limited to 5 steps as opposed to 15 steps on a JP1 remote or unlimited steps on an extended JP1 remote. The Myharmony software has no macro (sequence) capability at all (zero steps) outside of activities, so you'll definitely want to use the stand-alone software.

As a JP1 user myself, I find the harmony software very awkward, tedious, slow, clunky and frustrating. It's nowhere near as easy or sophisticated as JP1 software. Discretes are usually in the database. However, since harmony automatically tracks the power/input states of your devices (toadtog functionality in JP1 terms), discretes aren't essential. But I highly recommend you keep your JP1 remote for teaching the harmony any missing commands you may run across. For example, harmony had absolutely none of the 20 something discretes on my new toshiba tv, so I had to build an upgrade in the JP1 software and teach them all to my harmony. You could also email pronto hex to support and get them added, but free support only lasts a limited time.

All that being said, being able to put additional commands with labels on the LCD is the biggest benefit of harmony over JP1 remotes. You'll be very happy that you no longer have to memorize where all your functions are or use cheat sheets. But you'll pull your hair out every time you have to rearrange buttons or make other changes. I can build a very complex JP1 config in a few hours. The same config on harmony takes me several days because the web interface is like working in slow motion.

I think you answered my question pretty well. I was suspecting the same thing. The JP1 remote and the IR software let you do pretty much anything you'd want, even though I kept it pretty basic, whereas the Harmony is limited. It sounds like it would still serve my purpose.

Is JP1 mostly dead? I see some activity on the forum, but every other page I've looked at is still the same from 5 years ago. It's a shame because OFA could have been a giant killer if they took the concept and software and ran with it. Instead they just kept making crappy remotes with one important feature that was hidden from consumer use. I'd have hired the guy or at least bought the code.

I'd go back to JP1 except I'm 100% Mac in my house. My son has VMWare and Windows 7 64bit on his Macbook, but try getting a teenager's computer out of his hands.

Besides the forums, Rob hasn't updated the other pages much. We're trying to replace all that with the Wiki (link in my signature). The developers are very active and there are a lot of lurkers and file contributors. The software is much better than it was a few years ago. It now runs on any platform including your Mac and has a great graphical interface now for assigning functions to buttons with drag and drop. The latest interface hardware is fantastic, as is the IR widget (signal capture and analysis tool). For your 8910 on a Mac you need to download RMIR (not IR) and get a JP1.3 cable with EEPROM adapter, which unfortunately runs about $50 total.

Part of the slowdown in traffic I attribute to the huge amount of documentation we have and the quality of the software. But sadly there are only a handful of JP1 remotes you can go to a store and buy these days. To make matters worse, OFA introduced JP2 in the latest remotes which we have yet to crack. OFA did come out with a PC programmable remote a few years ago, the Xsight/Nevo. It's similar to harmony, but is still nowhere near as flexible or powerful as JP1. If we could hack that model, that would be the holy grail. But it isn't bad in it's current state. I currently have the Xsight Touch which is both cheaper and better than the harmony 700 in many ways (touch screen, RF, charging cradle). Its macros work very similarly to other JP1 remotes. It lacks harmony's state tracking but does not limit macros. Unlike JP1 remotes, additional commands must be learned and cannot be added with advanced codes (EFCs).

(apologies in advance for getting so far OT here in the 700 thread)