Wired @ Home

This Christmas was a wild one for our family. We purchased a 50-inch Plasma HDTV from Panasonic, upgraded our home theatre system to 1000-watt Pioneer speakers, got a new TV stand, purchased a Toshiba HD DVD, bought a Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, and finally a Harmony 880 Remote. We had so many new electronic devices it would be so overwhelming to control them all with 7 or 8 remotes so we picked up an all-in-one for half the original price on Boxing Day. At Costco though, you can buy it for $170 CDN, regular price.
Utility
The look and feel of the remote is great, but the button placement could use some work. For example, the Play button is not in between the fast forward and rewind, rather, it's one up and to the right of the fast forward button. My misfortunes usually happen when I'm rewinding and then I choose to play without looking down and hit the fast forward button accidently. The volume and channel buttons are placed perfectly and make for easy channel surfing and quick boost to the volume. At first, when I saw the number placement for entering channel numbers, I thought it would be a pain in the neck to move my hand all the way down there and I would loose the grip on the remote. Gladly that's not the case, and entering numbers was a breeze because of the curve at the bottom making the length seem dwarf. Lastly, the LCD screen is amazing and makes changing media a walk in the park.
Ease of Use
At the very top of the remote you have the Power button (which gets used seldomly), and the Activities and Help button. The Activities button controls all the things you can do with the remote. To set it up, you need to connect the remote to the computer and install the software. This is all very easy to do. The hard part comes where you have to configure the actual TV with the settings such as what TV/Video setting is used for the PS3, the HD DVD, and so on. You'll have to know as well, what setting your Home Theatre is on if you use one. Once that is done, you'll see all the Activities on the remote once you pick it up. The great thing about this remote is it lights up once you pick it up, a nice touch to a sleek remote.
Once you've got everything ready to go, click the Activity you'd wish to start and it'll be up and running within 5 seconds. Then it will go to that Activity menu and it will replace the specific remotes associated with that activity. For example, with an Xbox 360, you get their remote in that one, with all the options displayed on the LCD screen. When watching TV, the remote will control the volume, switching channels, and if you are a Rogers subscriber, you'll have the "A" "B" "C" buttons on it, as well as many others. One problem I found with the remote and which made it harder to use is this. Say the remote does not start the Activity properly, like not switching on a device; you can press Devices, and switch it on manually, but then you don't have access to all those buttons that you normally do with the Activity. You can keep on switching back and forth from devices but that is quite annoying. Luckily, the remote doesn't do it often and won't do it all if you do one thing. Point the remote dead on towards the devices throughout the time the remote starts the Activity.
Look and Feel
The remote comes with a charger, thus making it rechargeable and a fast one at that. It takes approximately 3 hours to fully charge the remote from dead. The remote feels good in the hands with curves at the right places. The aesthetics of it are perfect except the LCD screen could use some work as it isn't clear.
Conclusion
Would I recommend it to someone? Yes I would. If you have more than 4 remotes then it would be a great time saver and leaves more stress behind. Setting it up is a breeze if you have a general understanding, and using it is just as easy. If you do need help though, there is a guided step by step, interactive help button located at the top of the remote. For $170CDN, I'd pick one up now before it's too late. Note to PS3 users, the Harmony 880 remote is not compatible with it due to bluetooth issues.