The 520, 550 and 360 all have "vibration" sensors which are designed to put the remote to sleep after a certain period of inactivity (20 minutes??). They turn the LCD off to conserve battery power (not that the LCD uses much power anyway...)

This is different to the 880 and 890 and 720's tilt sensor, which is designed to light up the remote when you pick it up.

If the 520etc had tilt sensors to light up the remote it would drain the batteries in no time. The 880etc can do it because of the rechargeable battery.

Thank you for the clarification! That makes sense!

I'm referring to all of them. IMO, form has been given much higher priority than function.

I'm positive that many here would dispute you on that. I happen to think the TC30 is the perfect remote: it's perfectly balanced, is great for one-hand usage, allows quick access to trick-play keys and navigation without moving your hand, and has a color screen and recharger. It's an excellent remote.

The TC30 is a nice looking unit. I've not used one, but wonder about the 12 look-alike, feel-alike buttons near the bottom.

1) Does it pass the wife/GF usage test?
2) How easy is it to program?

I don't doubt that many here would dispute me. IMO most non-technical people interested in quickly & easily controlling their TV, Amp & DVR would desire a simpler remote.

Regardless of the TC30 excellence, one has to consider the risk of privately branded OEM remote like the TC30, and the Monster Cable 300. See this thread: [Link: remotecentral.com]

Can these remotes handle hex code?

Tinus81,
Short answer : yes. You can request tech support put in Hex codes for you.
I have personally requested this be done,to get discrete inputs for my Panasonic TV.

thanks a lot!

Harmony One:

The Harmony 880pro and 890pro both use Z wave.
Also the sound and picture button are pretty good because otherwise your forced to go thrue the device list to find sound fields (pro logic or 5ch stereo) and format button(for stretching picture)
Its much better to be in the activity when adjusting these.

The 880 Pro doesn't control Z-Wave, only the 890, & the 890 Pro can control Z-Wave

One thing that must be mentioned about the Harmony One and Harmony 1000 is that they do not appear thus far to have any of the cradle problems that seemed to plague the 880/890 rechargeable remotes. They've basically redesigned the cradle charging interface/connections.

This alone was enough to encourage me to replace my broken 890 with Harmony One rather than another 890. The loss of RF support (which I don't use - yet) was an unfortunate tradeoff, but should eliminate the frustration caused by forever fiddling with the charging cradle.

The charging problem doesn't seem to affect [i]all[/i] units -- I have a friend with an 880 who has had [i]no[/i] charging problems, but I've been through two 890s and two 880s all of which never charged properly in the cradle without at least some fiddling.

Concerning the Harmony one has their been any update with regard to the Coloured buttons being used as hard buttons instead of programming them on the Lcd display . This is the main reason why I am not upgrading to the 1 yet ??????

No, they're not going to bring out a new model for that purpose.
It sounds like a big disadvantage but it actually works out quite well in practice as there are spare hard buttons that you can use to allocate the colour commands.