Just a note to those considering a Harmony 880 for the HR-20.

I have had it with trying to get this Harmony 880 to work with the HR-20.

It works but the problems I am having are not what you should have when paying more than $140.00 for a remote.

The unit must be placed on the charger perfectly to charge.

On key presses you never now how many times the device is going to react to whatever is being sent per press. I have tried adjusting all the timing settings and # of repeats but these have no effect on this problem. You should not get two or three guide page flips per press of the channel buttons, you should not get two or three moves of the highlighted menu items per press of the arrow buttons, you should not get two or three numbers per press of the number keys.

I think either I have a bad 880 or the database that is loaded for the 880 is crap.

Also, getting the extened trickplay features to work is a crap shoot at best. No repeatability here at all.

I am sending this thing back and I think I will try a 676. Hopefully it will be better.

FWIW I'm using a 720 with the HR20 and everything works fine except for the trickplay feature where you have to hold the button on the original remote. Haven't taken the time to worry about that yet.

Maybe one of these days equipment manufacturers will realize that they need to provide discrete functions that always behave the same and do not rely on previous states or timing that makes it difficult or impossible for universal remotes.

And BTW - I'm a longtime Tivo user and Tivo implements those trickplay features much simpler.

If DirecTV copied that design, to skip to a tick mark you would press the jump back/skip forward buttons while fast forwarding or rewinding, not by holding one of the keys for 3 seconds. Unless Tivo has a patent on that, too - like the skip back after rewind.

I'm not having the same problems using an 880 with my HR20. My 880 is charging reliably. I don't get button-bounce. There IS some delay that takes getting used to, and it relates to the delay between key-presses. Often the HR20 does not seem to instantly "see" a command, and so you don't think it got it. You hit the button again only to realize the HR20 is now processing that command twice. It took me only a little while to "get used to" this characteristic, and now I love the 880.

DBrown