Can this be done with a Harmony (885) ??

[Avalan]

I currently have an old Pronto which still serves perfectly. However, we now have a second room in which I'd need a single remote and am considering to go for the Harmony now, especially because of the far better price and larger community. I realize however that a Harmony is far less flexible than a Pronto and would therefore like to check if I can do certain scenarios with them.

1. At the homepage, press 'Play Game' via one of the 8 soft buttons. Then a second page appears where I can choose the actual console with a soft button, e.g. 'Play XBox 360'. Being able to customize the graphics would be neat (e.g. using the console logos).

2. At the homepage, press 'Watch TV'. Then a second page appears where I can choose a category for the channels, e.g. 'Watch News'. Then a third page, where I get a list of all news channels (preferably with logos) and where I can scroll with the left-right buttons in case there are more than 8 channels for the chosen category.

3. Can I customize the selections on the homepage (activities) ? Because I'd like to have there 'Watch analogue TV' and 'Watch digital TV'. But all screenshots seem to show the same standard icons (e.g. watch DVD with the popcorn backgrouns).

BTW, isn't there an emulator with which I could see how it all works ? I can do that with ProntoEdit, it would be nice to have for the Harmony's as well.

Tnx!

[KingOfGondor]

the majority of your questions can't be done with the harmony range

as for analogue and digital tv you can have two differnt activites for that but you can't configure the icons (afaik)

[czzer]

You can't do "stacked" activities, but you can still do almost everything you want..just not quite as neatly.

You can have up to 255 activities, and call them whatever you want.

So for 1. you could have a "Play XBox" activity and a "Play PS3" activity(or whatever). You can't customize the icons at the moment, although it will supposedly be possible in the future(but they have been saying that for a while too).

2. You could have a "Watch News" activity, a "Watch Sport" activity, and whatever else you want. You can have 16(I think) favourite channels per activity, with logos. You press the "Media" button to access the favourite channels.

3. As above, you can call the activities anything you want.

The only "issue" with this is that all the activities would be listed on the one page(or more likely multiple pages which you scroll through...8 activities per page). ie they wouldn't be "stacked" as you would like. You can, however, set the order to whatever you want to make navigating the list a bit easier

[James.Bowman]

Originally Posted by Avalan

I currently have an old Pronto which still serves perfectly. However, we now have a second room in which I'd need a single remote and am considering to go for the Harmony now, especially because of the far better price and larger community. I realize however that a Harmony is far less flexible than a Pronto and would therefore like to check if I can do certain scenarios with them.

1. At the homepage, press 'Play Game' via one of the 8 soft buttons. Then a second page appears where I can choose the actual console with a soft button, e.g. 'Play XBox 360'. Being able to customize the graphics would be neat (e.g. using the console logos).

On a Harmony you would probably simply create a separate activity for each type of console you would play e.g. Play XBox and Play PS2. You do not have the facility to create menu hierarchies you are only able to add functions and activities to the menu one layer deep.

Originally Posted by Avalan

2. At the homepage, press 'Watch TV'. Then a second page appears where I can choose a category for the channels, e.g. 'Watch News'. Then a third page, where I get a list of all news channels (preferably with logos) and where I can scroll with the left-right buttons in case there are more than 8 channels for the chosen category.

On Harmony you can setup favorite channels and include the logo for each channel (on 785, 885 and 895 models). However, you cannot create hierarchies of menus, the favorite channel menu is only one level deep. You could simply group related channels together on the same pages of the menu.

Originally Posted by Avalan

3. Can I customize the selections on the homepage (activities) ? Because I'd like to have there 'Watch analogue TV' and 'Watch digital TV'. But all screenshots seem to show the same standard icons (e.g. watch DVD with the popcorn backgrouns).

You can create whatever activities you want. I have Watch TV and Watch PVR but the activities you have suggested are equally possible. You do not have much choice over the icons used for activities unfortunately. The Harmony selects the best icon for the activity depending upon what the activity is and the devices involved. In my experience, it usually does a pretty good job.

[Avalan]

Thanks for the answers guys. Seems the Harmony's are quite a bit more limited than I thought .