Harmony Colour Buttons, XBox 360 and Media Centre Extender

[timfg]

Finally got round to putting my XBox on the network and playing around with its capability as a Windows Media Extender device - wish I'd done it ages ago, it's much slicker than I expected and just works, at least for music and photos, short family videos etc. So, after playing around with it for a couple of hours using the XBox controller, I thought I'd get the Harmony setup to control it - SWMBO doesn't do XBox controllers...

I already have a 'Play 360' activity, so not much more to consider than switching to WMC from the Xbox dashboard and ensuring all the buttons do the right things. Don't think it's worth a separate activity - SWMBO can cope with 'Play 360' and then press the screen button (I have a 555) for Media Centre. But I did observe a few buttons were not quite right - specifically, no mapping for the colour buttons.

So - I added them in, along with a couple of other tweaks - Back for the Prev button etc. And, with tweaks, the colour buttons are almost superfluous in WMC, with one exception I've noted so far - you need the Yellow button to bring up the onscreen keyboard in the search dialogue, or you're stuck in texting style text entry. Which would be fine if the colour buttons worked in WMC, but none of them did...

Fine, I thought - probably differ in the US or something, I'll just have to learn them from the XBox controller (and wondered where the IR output was). But, before I did that, I happened to check them in the XBox dashboard.....and THEY ALL WORKED....

So, in summary: RGBY buttons on the Harmony all work for my XBox, except when it's in Media Centre, when none of them work - but they all work from my (wireless) 360 controllers (unsurprisingly) in any Xbox 'mode'

Totally stumped. What am I missing? I can only think the Xbox actually tells the controller it's in MC mode and the controller sends different IR for the colour buttons, but this seems a) pointless b) technically difficult and c) designed to annoy the &*%$ out of Harmony owners. How do I get them to work in MC, which is all I actually care about....

[timfg]

Bump!

[PieOPah]

Hi,

Did you ever work this one out?

I watch videos from an external HDD and the coloured buttons don't work when browsing what I want to watch. The strange thing is the 'Additional Buttons' do work which have the same mapping as the coloured buttons (which I had to manually map).

[cheshire_carper]

Originally Posted by PieOPah

Hi,

Did you ever work this one out?

I watch videos from an external HDD and the coloured buttons don't work when browsing what I want to watch. The strange thing is the 'Additional Buttons' do work which have the same mapping as the coloured buttons (which I had to manually map).

I have noticed this. When playing a vid, the yellow button changes Xbox playback aspect on the controller - but no response on the harmony. I have mapped the coloured buttons as have you.

[PieOPah]

Think I have worked it out...

You need to map the buttons to the activity, not the device....

Just waiting to test this one (wife watching TV at the moment!)

[triggerwave]

Hi all

I've tried configuring the coloured buttons for an Activity and it does not work as expected.

The remote flashes so it is obviously sending a signal but it still only works with the Xbox's control panel and not the Media Extender interface.

Any one have any ideas as to what to try next?

Ta in advance,
Michael
(aka Triggerwave)