Dave Donaldson

This is the single greatest $129 I've ever spent:

Logitech Harmony Advanced Universal Remote for Xbox 360

Allow me to explain. Just before Christmas I bought myself a little present, if you can call a shiny new Toshiba 52” DLP HDTV little (BTW, it's so freakin beautiful I can hardly stand myself). Once I had that, my home theater setup consisted of components from Toshiba (TV), Sony (DVD player), Yamaha (A/V receiver), Philips (VCR), and Scientific Atlanta (cable box), and of course each had its own remote. The only people who knew how to properly switch between the TV, DVD, and the stereo was myself and my 7-year old. And then a couple weeks later I finally got an Xbox 360, which only complicated the home theater setup even further. You should have seen me try explaining which remotes to use for which things to my mom and mother-in-law, heck even my wife.

So a couple months ago we were out shopping at Best Buy (we always seem to end up there, it's a sickness) when my wife spotted the Logitech Xbox 360 remote in the game isle. I've never had a universal remote that was truly universal, so I've never had much faith in them. But this one looked damn good so I decided to try it out.

I'm telling you, this remote is a dream. The remote has a USB port so you can hook it up to your computer to connect to the web to download all the latest vendor codes for all the latest components. A simple wizard walks you through the setup, which only takes a couple minutes. And when I say simple wizard, I mean stupid simple. I was expecting to have to enter all the vendors, model numbers, and codes for each component, but I didn't have to. The remote was smart enough to determine all that info itself, essentially making the wizard a clickthrough.

The remote breaks things into activities: Play Xbox 360, Watch TV, Watch a DVD, Listen to CDs, and Listen to the Radio. The setup wizard configures the components necessary to perform the selected activity. For example, when you select the Watch DVD activity, the remote makes sure the DVD player is on and that the TV and A/V receiver are on the correct input channels. Same sort of thing happens for each different activity: the remote takes care of setting each component accordingly, thus making it so that to switch between any activity is 2 button presses on only 1 remote.

The remote is also smart enough to know which mode should be activated for each activity. An example is the volume. In my home theater setup, volume for watching the TV and DVDs is controlled through the A/V receiver, while volume for the Xbox 360 is controlled through the TV (not the setup I want, but it's a limitation of the number of ports/jacks on the A/V receiver). Therefore, when we're watching TV or a movie and turn the volume up/down, the remote knows to use the volume on the A/V receiver, but when I'm playing the 360 the remote knows to use the volume on the TV. Sweet.

No more having to use 4 remotes and knowing which mode to use or any of that other B.S. It just works, and that's the best compliment I can give it.