Universal Remote Advice - ? For Logitech Touch Owners Too

[al4x]

im starting to build up a collection of remotes (LED backlight control, tv, av receiver) and would like to consolidate them into 1
i also use a logitech mx air mouse mainly with the HTPC

what i would like to do
be able to turn on all devices (especially the HTPC) from cold (or S3 if cold will not work)
use WMC
contol all the other kit.. ie customizable in the way that it can learn commands from the original remote, the hardest one will be the LED control as i bet this is not in a database

im looking at mainly something from logitech
either the touch or the one (the 800 qwerty in another thread looks amazing but no news)

important question
the touch is considerably more expensive, is it worth it? it is practically 2x the price!
one thing that would be nice is the 50 favorite channels with icons on the touch. does anyone know if this will work in WMC?

[treetop777]

I'm just got the Harmony 1000. I'm in the process of setting it up and like you, was wondering how to fire-up WMC. When the computer went to sleep, there was no way to wake it via remote control (that i know-of) so i finally settled for stating the computer cold with an X-10 appliance module. In the bios i have the computer set to come back on when it loses power and power is restored so in my "watch HPTC" activity, i have the remote send an x10 command to turn-on the module which in turn powers the computer.

Not very graceful but works for now. In the car-computer (carputer) world there are power supplies that simulate pressing the motherboard power button when power is applied or take away; that would be a more graceful way of powering or shutting down the computer. Only problem is that those power supplies operate on 12v dc.

Once the computer is on, it can go directly to WMC by applying switches to the shortcut.

Logitec has a profile for Windows Media Center and it works pretty good on the remote. Don't know about icons of favorite channels in WMC.

Again, this is on the Harmony 1000.

[mdavej]

Re the Touch: IMO, the touchscreen is a useless gimmick. They took away important hard buttons to give you that screen and all it's wasted space. All harmony models from the 600 up to the 1100 do favorites with icons that work fine with any device, including a PC running WMC. My favorite universal remote is the One-for-all Xsight Touch. It's very similar to harmony, but much cheaper and more powerful. It has RF like the 900 and far better battery life, but can also do practically unlimited macros, variable hold durations and the user has complete control over the content of the activity macros. I use 3 Xsights in my WMC system and on 2 Xbox extenders.

For keyboard and air mouse I much prefer the Mobile Mouse smartphone app or Hippo Remote for a Touchpad mouse. Keyboard/mouse control from a universal remote is possible, but is very awkward. The keyboard on the 800 would help, but even then I would still prefer the additional functionality of an app which automatically remaps all controls based on context.

[al4x]

Thanks for that.

I had a look at the xsight, looks a bit awkward compared to the harmony.
If the harmony one can do the icons then no need to go for the touch
I wouldnt be replacing the mx air mouse as thats very useful and essential really for normal pc activities