MojoLists

For years I believed the best universal remote was the one I used, the Pronto from Philips, and for many years it was the go to remote for home theater enthusiasts who fell in between a budget remote and a complete house system like a Crestron. I dutifully spent hours and hours programming the macros for any situation, testing each series of commands. I even designed a Star Trek theme so the interface looked like the controls on the Enterprise, geeky I know but I was drunk with the control and power I had in my hands.

Jump forward 10 years and I haven’t bothered programming any of my new devices into the remote and the best universal remote ever, well ,I use it on rare occasions in one of the bedrooms. It was a marvel of technology when it came out and it fit everything I could want into one package.

For most users a universal remote only has a few things is must do. It must control all of the devices, be super easy to use for everyone in the family, and not require days of programming to make it work. The answer is now much clearer and for most folks, no programming is required.

The Harmony Universal Remotes from Logitech are a huge leap forward, even for those of us that have very complicated systems. The Harmony remotes don’t use macros because they are not needed and the database of devices it controls is very, very impressive.

 The Harmony remotes are not your $20 Rat-Shack remotes but they can be found for around $50 on sale with heavy duty, super fancy models going for around $500. I have two of the remotes, the lower end, 550 and the middle of the road 670 and they are both wonderful in their simplicity.

I use the Harmony 550 in the living room where my needs are basic, at least by my standards. It must control a DirecTv receiver, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, and CD player along with the Harman Kardon receiver. In addition, I added an activity for my iPod and to listen to music from the Sat receiver. It handles them all, with no additional programming or tweaking, and here is why.

Harmony remotes break everything you want to do into activities, such as watch TV, Watch Blu-Ray or Listen to Music. You can customize the name you give each activity, which makes complex systems easier for the rest of the family.

Now here is the cool part, there are no macros, which seems impossible but the Harmony remotes remember what devices are on and make the changes to your system based on this information. Jumping from watching a movie to watching TV is a single button push, the media player turns off, the Cable or Sat receiver turns on and the correct ports on the TV and receiver are changed. The nice thing here is that it actually works.

In the unlikely event one or more of the devices doesn’t change as needed, you don’t have to go through a difficult series of button pushes, instead, you hit the “Help” button. When the “Help” button is used, the remote asks a series of questions to determine what went wrong. “Is the DVD player off?” “Is the TV set to HDMI 2?” and so on, what could be easier? No matter how much time I spent programming my Pronto, my wife always found herself on a screen she didn’t understand and lord help us if a device failed to turn on. Now she runs all of our systems like a pro, every time.

The Harmony Universal Remotes are easy to set up. You load a small program onto your computer and tell it about the devices you have. Logitech maintains a huge database of devices, it found every device in my house, and I have some very old and some very new equipment.

The software leads you through setting up the devices and activities by asking simple questions about how you use your system. After answering all of the questions, you connect the remote via a USB cable and it loads everything up for you. If you add or remove equipment, all you need to do is tell the software and reload the remote.

The only problem I have ever encountered is when programming the remote from a laptop. The updates just wouldn’t fully load onto the remote. After considerable research I discovered that many laptops don’t provide enough power through the USB ports to make the transfer, I simply moved to my desktop and loaded it without a problem.

That leads to my final comment. The Harmony software stores your configuration in their database so you don’t have to worry about losing it and it is available from any computer with an internet connection.

I can’t say enough about the Harmony remotes, they solve problems and make my wife smile. That is enough to make me a believer and retire my Pronto for good.

Logitech      Amazon

Online reviews are a necessary evil for anyone with an interest in electronics or technology, it is where everyone goes to get information. The internet is a powerful tool for anyone doing research, it is also their worst enemy. Knowing where to look and who to trust is important when making purchasing decisions and thankfully, there is a lot of good information, from knowledgeable people out there, you just have to know which rocks to look under.

An important thing to understand about even the best made, most loved products is that there will always be a unit with a problem. Not every electronic device does everything well and it is important to understand the strength and weakness of any piece of equipment. Owners who have a negative experience are much more likely to jump online and voice their problem while happy owners sit quietly, enjoying their equipment.

The next thing to know is that people are, well, people and the internet allows them to show a side of themselves that isn’t always nice or even truthful. It is human nature to love what you have and more importantly, to poo-poo the competition.

 Shortly after the birth of the internet and the refinement of search engines such as Google, webmasters, retailers and marketers began to understand what a powerful tool the internet is. In addition they needed to devise ways to drive users into their websites where they can sell and market their products. One way to improve your ratings on a search engine is to allow comments and reviews for the product you offer, and this is the root of all review evil.

Online reviews can be very valuable but I have a few rules when I do research. Disregard 90% of the comments on any sales website. Good or bad you are dealing with a high percentage of fan boys and naysayers who may or may not have used the product. Anything written on these sites should be suspect at best. I do pay attention when I see the same comment made over and over however and do additional research on a site with more experienced users, preferably a forum of enthusiasts.

Be it headphones, receivers, turntables, MP3 players or a car, there is a forum of enthusiasts who are more than happy to help you understand any purchasing decision. They will help you understand the real world factors of owning a, b or c product and how one may be better for your system specifically.

When I find a new forum I read through a number of threads to determine the legitimacy of the site. There are good and bad forums. Good forums contain civil, helpful and knowledgeable users. It is fairly easy to pick out the good from the bad based on the intelligence level of the posts. If it appears that every other post is filled with text speak, U R sumwere occupied by teens, which can be helpful but extra care must be taken as a considerable amount of misinformation is likely.

Reviews are not the end all of making purchasing decisions, especially if you are looking at a big dollar purchase or adding equipment that could affect the rest of your system. Any respectable dealer will let you test drive equipment, in your home long enough to decide what is right for you. Take advantage of this to ensure you make the best possible decision for your system. Online reviews are helpful to pinpoint the number of products you need to look at when making a decision but you should never buy blind based on the random information scattered across the internet universe.

Receiver power ratings are a tricky business that baffles even the most knowledgeable enthusiast. Many electronics companies spin their power ratings until they are unrecognizable from the truth and the public rarely has a clue. In testing many popular receivers from the likes of Onkyo, Pioneer, Kenwood, Denon and other major brands, it becomes clear… 100 watts is very rarely 100 watts except in the fairytale land of electronics marketing.

To fully understand how watts work in a home theater we need to delve into some engineering, scientific, brainiac stuff. Since I am not an engineer, a scientist or a brainiac, I will do my best here and keep it simple.

One important thing to understand is that watts are important, to a point. The differences between a 50-watt system and a 100-watt system is small, 3 decibels to be precise. Every 3 decibel increase in volume requires that the power output from the receiver doubles. In other words, every time you bump the volume up one notch, say from 30 to 29, the receiver doubles its output watts.

If a watt is a watt, why do equally rated receivers sound so different, why spend $1,000 when you can get the same watts from a $200 receiver. To illustrate how the power ratings game is played I am going to pretend we are selling cyclists, high end brand A is selling the Lance Armstrong model and low end brand B is selling me.

Both brands use a meter on the back wheel of the bike to compile peak output. Brand A does their test while Lance is climbing the steepest mountain in France and find his back wheel is putting out 100 watts and he is moving at 7 MPH. Brand B puts me at the top of a very steep mountain that has no curves and finds that despite my appearance I am capable of hitting 70 MPH and put out 130 watts. Of course if you put Lance and myself anywhere on earth and have us race, I will lose sight of Lance in less than a minute, followed shortly by a heart attack and quite possibly my death.

If Lance was a receiver, Brand A would put his rating down in a very accurate and meaningful way like this:  "100W/ ch. @ 8 ohms, with no more than 0.1% THD, from 20-20,000 Hz, all channels driven." This tells us that the receiver was tested over the full frequency range, just like we use it, all speakers driven and using the full frequency recorded.

Company B however gives us a specification like this: "130W/ch @ 8 ohms, at 1 kHz, one channel driven." Unless you enjoy listening to test tones through one speaker at 1kHz, this is not a meaningful specification and doesn’t give us any idea of what the system is capable of.

There is no standard for stating power ratings, which allows electronics manufacturers to legally lie to us. Knowing this fact helps and the sad fact is many of us can’t afford a super high end system so your own judgment has to come into play, you have to listen to the receiver, in your home, on your speakers and decide if it works for you.

Many moons ago the marketing teams discovered that 100 watts was the trigger for the general public and they found a way to get that rating without building a better receiver. The fact is however that unless you have an enormous room or very power hungry speakers, these receivers are more than enough for you. There is a very good reason to consider higher watt amps however.

Higher power gives an amp more headroom, which equates to better detail, truer bass and more pleasant sound even at low volumes. Home theater enthusiast often find they have to turn their receiver up, beyond reference volume to get the detail they seek. This is a sign of a straining system. Doing this also makes the bass muddy and the highs shrill, it is the sound of a struggling amplifier.

One affordable electronics manufacture consistently under rates the power of their receivers and they lose business because of it. Harman Kardon makes high power amps with flagship models showing ratings of 75 and 80 watts, these receivers however easily outperform many models that state 120, 130 or even 150 watts.

The moral of this story is that every purchasing decision requires research, by doing your homework your hard-earned money will buy more receiver. Most stores have a 30 day return policy so you can listen to the receiver in your environment, where it counts, take advantage of this and make a decision based on your ears, just make sure they are located in your favorite chair at the time.