I agree that the 880 has alot of capability and does have the feel of a quality product. It will be just the ticket for many.
In my case I did not find it very usable and its features actaully detracted from its acceptance. What was important to me was the ease of use of the PVR functions to FF through commercials and the guide selection controls. The guide could be learned by feel eventually, but it was not prominent. The select/up/down/right/left were all well position for natural use. The FF and Play buttons on the 880 are placed low on the remote and are small. This made is almost impossible to use single handedly use them and could not be used without actually looking at the remote. The same was true of the LCD screen. The graphics to show the activities are hard to read and requires use of glasses in my case. In my wife's case she would press the button to Watch TV and during the time the TV video was warming up she would press it again. The second press was no longer the Activity button, but the Harmony had reconfigured the soft key to be an extended features of the TV which enabled a PIP mode that caused the second video source to be selected. The screen remained blank since there was no video on the second input. The need to keep the remote in the cradle was also not a natural lifestyle activity. While we could be trained to use the Harmony, I opted to train another remote instead.
My AV switching is done via RS232 so I have no alternative but to make the PC part of my configuration process. Once the step is taken to have the PC switch the A/V based upon recognized IR, then it is just as easy to have the PC switch all the equipment so my remote only needs to be programmed with a few macro buttons to correspond to the "Activities", volume, guide, and nav buttons.
A nice feature of the Harmony is abilty to remember the state of equipment. This works well if only the single Harmony remote is used to control it. When equipment is shared and matrixed switched to multiple outputs then the single-remote is out of sync with other sources of control and usability goes way down.
I again say the 880 was a fine well engineered remote and will satisfy the needs of many users. It just did not fit the bill for me.
In my case I did not find it very usable and its features actaully detracted from its acceptance. What was important to me was the ease of use of the PVR functions to FF through commercials and the guide selection controls. The guide could be learned by feel eventually, but it was not prominent. The select/up/down/right/left were all well position for natural use. The FF and Play buttons on the 880 are placed low on the remote and are small. This made is almost impossible to use single handedly use them and could not be used without actually looking at the remote. The same was true of the LCD screen. The graphics to show the activities are hard to read and requires use of glasses in my case. In my wife's case she would press the button to Watch TV and during the time the TV video was warming up she would press it again. The second press was no longer the Activity button, but the Harmony had reconfigured the soft key to be an extended features of the TV which enabled a PIP mode that caused the second video source to be selected. The screen remained blank since there was no video on the second input. The need to keep the remote in the cradle was also not a natural lifestyle activity. While we could be trained to use the Harmony, I opted to train another remote instead.
My AV switching is done via RS232 so I have no alternative but to make the PC part of my configuration process. Once the step is taken to have the PC switch the A/V based upon recognized IR, then it is just as easy to have the PC switch all the equipment so my remote only needs to be programmed with a few macro buttons to correspond to the "Activities", volume, guide, and nav buttons.
A nice feature of the Harmony is abilty to remember the state of equipment. This works well if only the single Harmony remote is used to control it. When equipment is shared and matrixed switched to multiple outputs then the single-remote is out of sync with other sources of control and usability goes way down.
I again say the 880 was a fine well engineered remote and will satisfy the needs of many users. It just did not fit the bill for me.
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