kyleheon.com: Category Television

Harmony 880 Remote

Kyle Heon — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 00:19:01 +0000

So I’ve wanted a decent universal remote for quite awhile now and have been watching the Harmony line a bit. The 880 was in my price range and the other day I found it for $159.99, which is nearly $90 cheaper then I could find it anywhere else. Given that this is a three check month I ordered it with free shipping and had the remote within a couple days—not bad for free shipping if you ask me.

So how do I like it? Well, I’m torn. It is definetly pretty cool looking, with it’s Tivo like look and feel but with a rechargable lithium batter, a blue glow backlight that turns on automatically when you pick up the remote and tilt it ever so slightly.

Programming it however hasn’t been quite as easy as I’d like. The Harmony website that you use to program the remote is pretty unfriendly, and I’m a savvy computer user (programmer by trade for anyone new to the site). I’ve managed to work through most of my problems though but it’s been a timely process. Part of my pain has been with my new Samsung televion. The pain centers around automatically changing the televisions selected input and how Samsung does this. You have to hit “menu” on the controller, then select the “input” section and cycle up/down to the one you want. Alternatively you can cycle through them by clicking the “source” button. This is pretty tricky to program into the Harmony remote.

Researching things online lead me down the path of using the discrete IR codes for the required inputs. Another part of the problem is that many of the input codes in the Harmony database are wrong so fixing these was the first task. For instance, someone pointed out that Component 1 was actually Component 2 in the database. I tested this and it was in fact which made fixing the problem I had with my “Play a DVD” activity quick and easy.

Last night I hooked up the Xbox, PS2, and VCR but have not yet setup the remote. I’ll get around to that later this week[end]. We bought a new upconvert dvd player (Sony 5-disc model) and adding this was pretty easy, just removed my old one and added this new model and then configured it for the “Play a DVD” activity.

The Harmony 880 remote employes the concept of an Activity, something such as “Watch TV”, “Play a DVD”, etc where you can string together what is in essence a macro. For instance, my “Watch TV” activity ensures the following:

Samsung TV is on
COMCAST PVR is on
Sony Receiver is on
Samsung TV input is set to HDMI1
COMCAST PVR input is set to Tuner
Sony Receiver input is set to TV/SAT

The remote also has the ability to keep track of when a device is on so that it doesn’t get shut off by choosing a new activity. To shut down for the night you can click the “Off” button and it powers things down one at a time.

I still have some timing issues from time to time but overall it’s been working pretty well.

Now in high def!

Kyle Heon — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 01:28:00 +0000

I’ve been checking in at Best Buy every night just in case my tv had arrived. Hit paydirt this evening as the truck had just left and my tv was in.

We have been working all night long setting it up but hot damn, it simply rocks. I’ve been watching a Red Sox game on NESN HD since about 7:15PM, it is simply beautiful, and the 40inch was a good choice, it’s not too overpowering in the room, just right. I could probably go up to a 46inch comfortably if I wanted but this will do for awhile now.

With the new entertainment center we built over the weekend, the living room has transformed into a much nicer room. Now I need to look into buying a newer dvd player, possibly one of those nifty upconvert models to take full advantage of my the new tv.

HDTV, here we come!

Kyle Heon — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 00:08:00 +0000

Over the past couple of weeks my wife and I have been discussing upgrading to a newer, bigger television with HDTV. It was the only lacking piece of our home theater (a couple years back we upgraded to a Sony ES receiver with 100 watts by 7 speakers). We struggled to find just what we wanted in both the size and price range we wanted to hit.

With the Labor Day sales this past weekend though we managed to find something that suits our wants and desires and didn’t break the bank (too much).

So, what did we get? Well we decided on the Samsung 40 inch Flat-Panel LCD HDTV which looked amazing in the store. Everything I could find online confirmed that this model wouldn’t dissapoint.

After price haggling and Best Buy Reward Zone discounts (12%), the price came down to around $1800, which I feel is a very awesome deal.

The bad news is that I don’t have it yet. Best Buy was swamped yesterday (sales, and the weather pushed people into stores instead of the beaches). We were there for nearly 4 hours and ended up waiting only to find out that the television we’d bought had been shipped out and they had no more stock. At the time it wasn’t a big deal because we weren’t going to be able to set it up until next weekend as we had a television stand on order.

Then last night we were at Wal-Mart and found exactly what we wanted in terms of a television stand and audio tower(s) which we ended up buying. We spent all evening last night and all day today putting things together. Now that we have a stand and no television I’m a bit annoyed. As consolation Best Buy gave us a $50 gift certificate. The television should be in on Wednesday (two days from today)...here’s hoping.

This all comes just in time for football…I can’t wait to watch the Patriots (and the Red Sox) in high-definition. I’ll probably also switch over this weekend to watch the race (Nascar) cause that should rock too.

Sopranos Season Six!

Kyle Heon — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 01:54:00 +0000

Hot damn! The sixth and final season of the Sopranos starts this coming Sunday (March 12th). I can’t wait. It has been too long now to not have and of the following: Sopranos, Deadwood or Rome airing on HBO.

Given that it is the final season, I suspect that all hell will break loose, and probably right from the start. Certainly hope they go out with a bang.

Deadwood Season 2 Starts Tonight!

kheon — Sun, 06 Mar 2005 16:04:00 +0000

I’m really excited about the season two series opener for Deadwood tonight on HBO. We cancelled HBO last year sometime after The Sopranos and Deadwood finished up but this morning I called to sign back up, at least long enough to watch season two.

If you haven’t seen this new gritty western series you should definetly give it a shot. I wasn’t a big fan of it at first but a few of my co-workers couldn’t stop talking about it and after the first couple of episodes I found myself really enjoying it. My wife, who isn’t a fan of movies and shows with excessive profanity even started watching. Be warned, it is definetly full of profanity.