Take Control!

Woah, sorry about the disappearing act there.

I've been digesting E3 for a while now. There was just too much stuff to download and watch, and I wanted to give everything a fair chance.

But before that, I have got to say, I just bought the most BADASS remote control ever.

It's a Logitech Harmony Universal remote. (the Xbox 360 Variant)

It is just amazingly cool and worth every penny. (And no, you don't need to own an X360, it just happens to be themed around it, and has built in support for all X360 media features)

You organize things not by device, but by activity, which is pure brilliance.

For instance, I chose from the little screen the option "Watch TV"

The remote then powers on the TV, the surround sound system, and the cable box.
After it does that, it will:
- Switch TV to Component 2 input
- Switch Surround Sound system to AV 1 Coax input

From that point forward, each button is intelligently mapped. If I hit the volume buttons, they will raise the volume on the surround sound system. If I hit the channel buttons, or menu, or info, those will all access the various features of the cable box. If I hit the display button, it will change the aspect ratio of the TV.

BADASS.

So lets say I want to change activities. I hit 1 button. Press "play Xbox"

The remote will then:
-Turn off cable box
-Turn on Xbox 360
-Switch TV input to Component 1
-Switch Surround Sound input to AV 1 Optical

That's it. 1 button, which would have required 4 different buttons on 4 different remotes.

How hard was it to set up? HA! It was freaking brilliant. All I needed to do was type in the model numbers for my devices, and it already had all the IR codes for everything. Except one thing... I couldn't figure out the model number for the cable box.

And this blew me away too...

The software told me to go grab the remote to the cable box. The Harmony has an IR receiver at the base. It said:
-"Point the remote at the base, and press power"
-"Press Channel Up"
-"Press #1"

As soon as I did that, the damn thing TOLD me what model I had. It's like "You have a Time Warner Explorer 8100a"

I was like "HOT DAMN!"

And of course, you can map ANY button on the remote to ANY function on ANY device.

Hell, once we find the remote for the air conditioner, we're going to add that functionality to the remote too.

I'm telling you, if you have 3 or more remotes lying around, GET ONE of these. Logitech has a whole line of Harmony, but according to reviews, this is actually their best one even if it is themed around the X360. But even so, the look is not bad at all.