New Logitech Harmony Touch - Page 5

How many gestures do you need? Consider all that can be put on the screen and accessed by a finger flip. Much better than going screen by screen on the One. How long have you been using the Touch?

I just got my Touch and finished setting it up today. It replaces an 880 in my BR, but I also have a One in the living room which I use much less frequently. The 880 was developing balky buttons, so I had planned to replace it with another One. When the Touch was announced, I decided on it instead.

My first disappointment with the Touch is that the 50 favorites seem to be global--ie, they can be accessed from any activity, but I see no way to have more than 50 favorites total with workarounds by having additional activities as was possible on the One and 880. Perhaps someone more clever than I am can figure out a way to add more favorites.

I'm not wild about the icons which easily downloaded from Harmony's software when I selected my "favorite channels" from my local Comcast, but am hopeful that Square Eye's icons will be a big improvement when they become available. Harmony's software did easily transfer the devices and activities from my 880, and I've noticed no glitches from that transfer yet.

Ergonomically, I already prefer the Touch over the 880 and probably over the One as well. I will have to adjust to the "quick trigger" of the touchscreen, but I'm confident that will develop with use and practice. I believe the top location of the transport buttons will be much easier to use than the bottom location was on the 880--not sure yet how much I'll miss the "skip forward" and "skip back" hard buttons. The "lower" location of the hard "volume" and "channel" buttons on the Touch will take a bit of getting used to though.

Overall, I think I'll be pleased with the Touch though I was a bit skeptical when I first began handling it. It will be much less clumsy to use with one hand than either the 880 or One, IMHO.
Edited by Tom Ames - 10/16/12 at 3:44pm

Let us know your opinion after a week or so. I found there was a learning ccurve to getting comfortable with it
Edited by dlm10541 - 10/16/12 at 3:09pm

hey tom, thanks for the mention. shoot me a pm or email with the channel icons you'd like and i'll get them into the first batch at iconharmony.com. the new db and front end should be up w/in a week or so. cheers, rc

Thanks for the offer, but with a limit of 50, my choices will necessarily be very mainstream (WAF, you know) and will likely be taken of very early anyway. Thank you for the efforts and maintaining your site. Can't wait to see how they look!

How are you guys liking the macros now that they are 10 commands instead of just 5? Thanks

Went to Best Buy with a 20% coupon and got this beaut for $200. I'm worried like others about the button layout for myself and my wife. We'll see how it stacks up, if not, I've got 30 days to return it.

I am still enjoying the harmony remote. I know that you can have the touch update from older remotes. that works great. however I went back and re did everything from stratch. it seem to work better with finding proper items in the list. I now can fast forward proper with the dvr with the buttons. I dont have to use the touch buttons for it. I can also program it better with adding stuff from the tv and receiver if I need them.. just a friendly tip for anyone out there. its also very fast.

Jacob

I'm on the fence here...I have an old Harmony 550. The buttons are starting to get extremely unresponsive. Thinking about upgrading to the One, but then this thing decide to release out of the blue. Price aside, is the Touch that much better than the One? I do basic things with my home theater set up (watch TV using DirecTV, stream movies to my PS3, and that's pretty much it.) I love the one...my friend has it and its a huge step up from the 550.

I never owned the one.. but if you are going from an older remote to the touch. you will do just fine. its much faster. I had the 720.
highly recommend.
Jacob
Edited by Jacob305 - 10/18/12 at 11:24am

I agree with Jacob. I only got my Touch a couple of days ago (see my earlier post above), but I'm liking it more every day. I'm not sure there are any significant functional differences between the Touch and the One for typical HT setups other than the presence/absence of hard buttons for skip forward/back. The major difference is the ergonomics, and I already much prefer the Touch's. Whether that's worth the $100 current price difference will produce differing opinions.

the favorite icon database for the new Harmony Touch is up at iconharmony.com. there aren't many up presently but i plan to add more as requests come in for any of those default icons that don't read well on the remote screen.
i'll be adding a new custom activity icon database soon.

Where did you get the 20% coupon? They never seem to send me these anymore...I used to get them monthly...

This looks like a nice remote but the $$$ makes me keep my 2 880's as the primary remotes. I had to work on the chargers as the gold plate had worn away but that problem was fixed with a little solder and disassembly/reassembly on the charger. I am curious if all of my program will come over from my old account if I get a new remote as my profile is much better than the cookie cutter device set up for my Denon AVR.

Hey there,
anyone gone from the 1000 or 1100 to one of these? I'd be interested in your thoughts if you have. The Touch's will be released in Australia in a few weeks, and my 1000i (international version of the 1000) is getting a bit flaky, and thought that this could be a good replacement. The only thing I'm worried about is I get an insane amount of customisation with the 1000i, and I'm hoping I won't lose that with this remote ie - can you add "buttons" on the touch screen to an activity to control particular functions of your devices, or are you locked into what the activity wants to provide you?

Not only can you custoize what commands are on the screen but you can do it from the remote without attaching to you computer.

Thanks!

Picked the Touch up last weekend. I like it so far. Only thing I can't figure out is how to set up a macro to turn on Zone 3 on my Onkyo 818 receiver. I use zone three to power on my Outlaw Audio 7500 amp (Onkyo doesn't have a trigger for the main zone) If anyone can help me figure this out, I would gladly appreciate it. I tried adding it to the Onkyo, but there is no preset buttons for zones. I may have to learn that function for ever Activity that uses my receiver/amp combo.

thanks,
Joe

^^^

An alternative might be to define the Zone 3 as a separate device if it can be operated separate from the Main and Zone 2. The Logitech database has a two devices for my Denon AVR, Main and Zone 2. I have activities defined for single and multiple devices, e.g., "List to Music Main", "Listen to Music Zone 2", and" Listen to Music All". The result is a lot of activities, but it works.

For owners of the Touch: if you are not happy with the favorite channels icons downloaded via Harmony's software from your provider, Squareeyes has some icons up on his site. Practically all were huge improvements from the auto-downloaded ones I received via Harmony/Comcast.

That won't work. I need zone 3 (which triggers my amp) to turn on with all activities. What I need to figure out is how to learn a separate command and add it as a macro afterward to each activity.

Teach the Zone 3 "Power On" command from the original remote to the harmony under the main receiver device and label it Z3 ON. Now you can add that additional command to the beginning of every activity that uses your AV Receiver.

this is what I'm trying to do. Is there documentation that shows how to learn commands? I must have missed it in the manual.

Check out p.7 of the Touch manual which can be downloaded from Logitech's website.

Edit: Whoops. P. 34 may be more relevent.
Edited by Tom Ames - 10/24/12 at 6:55pm

Figured it out while Tom was posting to this thread. If anyone has a similar situation, be sure to add the command to the start AND end sequence, if applicable.

Thanks!

I bought the touch, with the intent of controlling the following devices:

• Sharp Aquos 70"
• Denon 2113CI
• HTPC with WMC
• LG BD390 Blu-Ray

I have this WMC Remote, which works great except for the lack of control over the TV and Receiver. My intent was to get the same functionality, but without the need for the other two remotes for volume and power.

While it is working, there are two key subtleties that are killing the experience. The first is that there is a slight delay when issuing commands to the HTPC, as compared to the original WMC remote. With the original, each command was precise and instantaneous, which my wife and I got used to and enjoyed. Now the Touch has settings for each device that allow you to control delays, but I have tried all kinds of combinations (including 0ms delays on all options) with no success.

The second problem is the lack of mouse functionality. I wish my WMC was stable enough that I'd never need the mouse, but that just isn't reality. I'm wondering if there could be a mode for the touch screen to emulate the mouse, but the simple 15 dollar WMC worked great in this respect.

I'll keep playing with it, but it remains to be seen whether the Touch will be able to add value to my setup.

FWIW,
I am still using the 720 (have never "upgraded") and love it. Having 6 Activities or Devices on one screen is priceless.

amen.

Jacob

Has anyone tried to use the Touch's screen as a primitive mouse yet? If you learn all 16 (or 8) directions of an MCE remote with a mouse pad and create screen gestures for each command, it should work at least to scoot the cursor around the screen. I'd be interested in the results.

I think you instead want the Harmony QWERTY which would support mouse control for an HTPC on the touch screen. I have no idea when Harmony QWERTY will get release since Logitech released the Harmony Touch with no advanced notice.
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1398964/logitech-harmony-800-qwerty