I am strongly considering getting this remote. I have a very basic setup: DVD, VCR, TV, receiver. This is really just a setup for watching movies, the odd TV show, and listening to the radio.

My only question is, how is the Harmony at navigating device setup menus? Like say I want to add a channel to my TV. Am I better off using the TV remote for this?

Its actually pretty good at this, as long as you are willing to spend the time configuring it to do it!

As an example, my TV has a Screen Mode menu. To get into it, you press RED. Then you press channelup/channeldown to choose the screen mode you want, then OK to choose it.

So I programmed a harmony menu item to press RED, then go into a different mode.

In this mode, it maps the scrollwheel to channelup/channeldown. When you press the scrollwheel (or press the centre button), it then sends the OK command, and goes back to the main menu.

Where it won't work is if there is a hierarchy of menus, and pressing OK on some carries on to a next menu, whereas pressing OK elsewhere exits the menu.

In this case, there's no way of knowing whether OK should stay in "menu" mode or exit.

However, all is not lost. What I did was create many harmony menu items, each of which take you straight through the menu hierarchy to a part where you can only use up/down/ok.

e.g.
Brightness -> MENU DOWN DOWN OK goto_menumode
Contrast -> MENU DOWN DOWN DOWN OK goto_menumode

It *will* take a while to do this; I found the XML interface rather complex, and I've got a degree in Computer Science!

Good luck with it.