Harmony remotes are getting discontinued by Logitech.
Anyone have any alternatives?
Damn. The writing has been on the wall for a while but I’m disappointed. The Harmony hub was excellent for its price. I’m interested in any recommended alternatives too.
I haven’t used mine since I got my Fire TV stick/remote. I still use the hub, though; alexa and the fire tv remote both use it to turn everything on, change modes, turn off, etc.
Fortunately HDMI-CEC has rendered a lot of the functions obsolete - volume control is passed along to any AV amplifier, and input switch on new source works well.
The harmony hub is still linked to an Alexa thought so it has one useful function: “Alexa, turn TV off.”
Nothing else really works, or at least it didn’t when I set it up.
I used a Harmony remote for a long time to switch among controlling the TV, the Roku, the sound system, and the DVD/Bluray player.
Now the Bluray player is all but forgotten, I don’t need a separate signal to control audio or turn everything on and off anymore, and I bought an HDHomeRun so OTA TV is just another app on the Shield.
The Harmony remote is unneeded. A $10 Android TV remote works fine. Such is progress.
Aw that’s a bummer. Hopefully the in market remotes continue working for a long time.
My fire tv remote can mostly do everything but I use my harmony to control my HTPC too. I even set up buttons on the remote to do certain key combinations like opening the Plex app and don’t know if other alternatives exist.
Actually going through a re-setup with a new TV and new wifi network and yeah, I have pretty much no need for the Hub anymore. Chromecast’s remote handles all my input switching and I can always grab the native remotes for any settings adjustments (which I had to do with Harmony anyway).
The one thing I’m keeping it around for is Google Assistant integration and voice control.
Truly the end of an era. I honestly think my first Harmony remote was the single best bit of tech I ever bought. Universal remotes used to be terrible. But, yeah, I’ve barely used one since I got my OLED - the smart remote controls basically everything.
Damn damn damn damn. I hope they maintain the support for a long while. (I know they say they will, but when keeping the servers up becomes one guy’s tertiary priority…)
On our main media room set, with multiple game consoles and an OTA Tivo, they make things a lot easier.
I guess I could maybe figure out how to make my receiver’s remote manage things at this point, since the receiver is the HDMI switcher, but I have the Harmony setup soooo tuned…
I’m really glad I have a backup Harmony One remote, since my current one is getting pretty long in the tooth. But I also need to make sure the software is up to date, especially since I’m using all eight HDMI inputs on my receiver, plus the component input on the TV.
There really is no alternative to the harmony hub setup. Hopefully something exists by the time my hubs die or (more likely) logitecch shuts down the servers.
Whatever happened to that ridiculous ly overengineered thing that controlled your devices using machine vision?
Caavo? It never amounted to anything.
Truly the end of an era. I’ve been a Harmony user for as long as I can remember and always felt like one of the chosen people when I could just hit one button and have all my devices act accordingly. Meanwhile everyone else had four or five remotes sitting in their coffee tables.
But as others have acknowledged, these days the remote that comes with your FireTV or Roku is nearly as good, and in general I think the way Harmony worked, based on activities, always confused most people.
It did always feel like Logitech never really knew quite what to do with Harmony after they bought them. I just don’t think there’s a big enough market for remote controls at the $150+ level.
With HDMI CEC the remote that came with your streamer is perfectly fine, so long as that’s the only thing connected to your TV. If you have multiple devices they don’t cut the mustard.
Frontrunner right now is probably the Softbaton, but it’s not comparable to what you get with a harmony hub+remote.
I was just looking at that. It’s an interesting option, and you can program macros, but apparently only within a single device. So you can’t program it to turn on multiple things then change input, etc.
Oh you can’t? You put in more time than me. It blows, then. My old URC remote from like 15 years ago could do that. Still to this day the best non-connected manual remote design ever made.
The real problem is Harmony so thoroughly devastated all competitors that now that it’s dead, nobody’s around to pick up the slack. For a decade the answer to every remote control question has been “get a Harmony”.
I started with Harmony but switched to Neeo after their last fiasco. Now, I use the neeo to turn on my system, adjust volume, and switch components and that’s it. I use the Apple TV remote for channels, etc. My components are behind cabinet doors (other than the TV) and the Neeo has worked fine for me. I think I’ve had it for three years now.
The only thing the harmony truly does for me now is handle turning my receiver on and off along with the tv…I need to see if it’s CEC compatible, but honestly…I should probably just replace it with a sound bar and be done with it. 5.1 surround isn’t really a thing with small kids.
I haven’t really looked much into HDMI-CEC. I know that my Fire TV can automatically change my TV and receiver inputs to what it needs to be in order to use the Fire TV, but can it be set up to also change to other devices? Like changing my TV and Receiver inputs to what I need for my Xbox or PlayStation?
I barely use the Alexa features of it now but I’d be willing to use it more if I could tell my Fire TV to launch my other devices.