Wow - I didn't realize you were that ignorant about the harmonys (and that's not meant in a derogatory manner).

The harmony software will INITIALLY assign commands to the various hard buttons and in some cases the LCD soft buttons when you setup an activity. e.g. If you're doing watch a DVD with an A/V receiver it will assign the transport controls to the corresponding DVD transport controls and the volume commands to the A/V receiver volume commands, etc. However - you can edit the button assignments any time you want.

An activity consists of a collection of devices (your choice) and any button (except the ones I mentioned above) can be programmed to perform any function for any device in the activity. You can map Volume Up to Channel Down if you want. And you can create sequences of up to 5 commands from multiple devices and assign those to buttons (limited macros).

The only thing it can't do is have one button do different things based on how it is pressed.

When I select Watch a DVD it turns on the DVD player, TV and receiver (unless they're already on in which case it does nothing), puts the TV and receiver on the correct input (if necessary), sets the light controller to scene 2 and starts the DVD. The transport and channel controls operate the DVD, the volume control operates the A/V receiver volume and I have custom LCD buttons to control the lights. If I hit pause the DVD pauses and the lights come up to 100% - when I hit play the DVD starts playing and the lights go back down to their previous level (scene 2).

When I hit Watch a DVD - if the TV did not go to the correct input, I press HELP and it either automatically fixes it or it asks questions and sends commands based on the answers until the problem is fixed.

All of that was setup in about 20 minutes including adding the devices.