I currently own an MX-500, which has been a great remote but also a bit of a pain in terms of all of the macro recording that was required. I recently added a Sony 400-DVD changer to my component stack, and I mainly purchased the 880 to serve as a front-end for accessing the discs.
After a weekend of fiddling with the 880, here's my thoughts:
* The unit itself is nice-looking, a bit smaller than I expected. There's not as much definition to some of the buttons as I would like, but I imagine it will improve as I get used to it. The MX-500 was a big remote with raised buttons, and easier to use without looking down. However, I am glad to be rid of the center joystick on the MX-500, which was very difficult to click-to-select.
* No issues with the charger.
* The initial set-up was a breeze. It was literally ten minutes until I was managing the basics of my system (switching between activities).
* The IR seems a bit underpowered. I have to aim pretty directly.
* The web-based interface is pretty powerful, but also cumbersome. Changing an activity via the wizard requires what seems like 30 clicks. I've had experience with slicker, more polished web apps, but this one is serviceable and I am often amazed that the stuff works as advertised. I do wish that it was just a local desktop app that updated its database periodically.
* I've added in logos for favorite channels via a "Watch TV" activity and a "Digital Music" activity. This capability is pretty cool.
* I spent about three hours creating a database for my DVD library and then uploading that as a CSV file. I have DVD profiler, and tried to export directly to CSV but there's just too much fiddling required to get the titles and slot numbers to work. Now that I'm finished, it's very cool and convenient to simply select a DVD title on the remote.
* Speaking of DVD's, It took some time to get the titles named in a way that works well. For some reason the screen has the two lines of text with a small font and one line with a big font for each item. This means that if you have a one-word title, it's going to appear on the 3rd line and will be cut off after only a few letters. For many of the movies I ended up adding some blank spaces and then a dummy character (such as a dash) to sit on the 3rd line. I also had to do a lot of abbreviating. In the end, it's definitely worth it and I only have to add the occasional new DVD into the database and re-upload.
* I suspect it will require a lot more fiddling before I am happy with the timings between key presses and components. It's fairly sluggish in some areas, but it takes a lot of time to change a setting, update the remote, test it, try another setting, etc.
* Overall verdict: I'd give it a A-. If I didn't have the DVD changer and wasn't so appreciative of the capability to select a disc via the remote, then I'd probably give it a B.
Now, some questions (so far):
* I have an Xbox 360 and want to set up an activity for listening to music streamed from my networked PC. I've got the basic Xbox controls working properly, but I understand there's a way to access "My Music", "MY Photos", etc. via a phantom Microsoft Media PC. I tried adding this device and some commands, but it doesn't have any effect. Any suggestions?
* I am trying to change the button labels that appear in the display for some activities. However, if I make a change to a particular activity, that change will also appear across other activities that use that device. For example, I set up an activity to listen to digital music (music choice via cable). For this activity, the only item I wanted in the display was "Blank TV" to turn the TV to a blank input channel. When I made this change, the other activities that were based upon "Watch TV" also showed this change. I had to go back and restore everything to default. Is this a feature or a bug?
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