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Logitech Harmony 1000 Universal Touchscreen Remote
Logitech announced here at CES their top of the line remote control for your home theater. Sporting a touchscreen along with buttons on the right side of the unit, the Harmony 1000 is the king of the hill when it comes to universal remotes. Just like other Harmony remotes, you start by plugging it into your computer and telling the software what type of devices you have. A Samsung TV, Harmon Kardon Receiver, LG HD-DVD/Bluray disc player? The software tells the device what IR or RF codes to use to talk to the devices and then you're off and running.   One of the killer features on the Harmony 1000 was its Help mode. The way all in one universal remotes work is by keeping everything synchronized together (turning on the TV, Receiver, etc at once). However, if one of the devices gets out of sync, the entire system wont work - the TV will be on and the receiver and cable box will be off. The Help button will fix these problems by going through and troubleshooting individual components until you confirm that everything is working properly. The Logitech representative demonstrating the product said something along the lines of, "No more calls from the wife." It's very simple to use, even for the non-techies out there. I got a chance to see the Help mode in action and it was very impressive, within 10 seconds the components were back in order and the device was asking the user to confirm that everything was operational. On to the hardware, it's got a 3.5" full color touchscreen with the screen that will change depending on the device's context. On the right side of the screen are the channel and volume up and down, along with a mute button and a replay button. A five way button provides navigation through menus, along with an OK button in the center of the directional pad. Finally, there is a dock provided to recharge the built in (but user serviceable) lithium-ion battery.   The Harmony 1000 supports up to 15 separate devices in your home theater. The home screen will display the different tasks you want to with your home theater - watch TV, watch a DVD, play video games, view pictures, etc. Push on the screen to switch to that task, and the screen will populate with the appropriate buttons, for example watching a DVD will show me the play/pause, fast forward, rewind, next and previous chapter buttons. To top it all off, the device can interface with Windows Media Center to show you folders and let you navigate around using the Harmony 1000. Logitech has a really nice device in the Harmony 1000. They're reaching out to the ultra high end home theater enthusiasts to provide a much better experience than similar remotes. No complicated menus and programming when you replace a single component in your living room, just a trip to the computer and a download of a new profile for that device. The single negative point about this device is the price - $499. Other than that, it's a superb universal remote, and a great way to dump the five or six remote controls you have on your coffee table.
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