What are your general experiences and recommendations for managing power settings on digital cable tuner set top boxes and personal video recorders/hard disk recorders?

I have specified that both units should be permanently on and not managed by H895, to avoid anyone from inadvertently turning either of these units off during recordings. I see no other viable option, since both units to my knowledge only have Power on/off toggle commands, and not separate on/off commands.

Despite these settings, for some obscure reason, the set top box is still turned on when I start the Watch TV activity. The HDD unit stays off. Apparently I must have overlooked something. I have not yet done exhaustive testing. I also have some power on/off issues with the preamp and projector, but consider these unrelated and requiring timing adjustments.

Before I will trust using the remote, I need to be 100% certain it will never send any power toggle commands to the HDD or Set Top units as part of its "automagic" power management behaviour. Can you reassure me this will be the case, once (if) I get passed initial setup tweaking?

If you set the power to "leave this device on all the time" then it won't send any power commands at all. That's how most people handle DVRs. But most don't really shut off completely anyway - they just turn off the output but keep recording internally. Which one do you have?

Doesn't matter if you have toggles or discretes - the harmony will handle both.

I don't understand why you think the settings aren't working. If the set top box is on and you start the watch TV activity and it's still on - then it's working. Once you turn it on it should stay on and if you turn it off it should stay off. Easy to test.

The remote won't send commands when you're not touching it.