I'm thinking of getting the Harmony One remote. Everything looks and sounds good based on what I've seen and read. One question though, how would the Harmony One handle the Yellow, Red, Blue and Green button of the DirecTV remote?

Thanks.

You've hit on the one big fault in the One - and it's a fault that Logi really ought not to have made - the lack of dedicated colour hard buttons.
The answer to your question is that you get virtual colour buttons on the LCD screen, and maybe they will be all right for you there, but for most people they are not good enough, and we have had to copy them over to hard buttons that we don't need for anything else.

You can also map the color buttons to unused hard buttons if you want. I have red and green mapped to the page up/page down buttons on my 720 plus having them on the LCD.

Luckily there are hard buttons at the top of the One that are pretty useless in a TV Activity and the colour functions are quite practical when transferred to those.

Just curious. Are you suggesting that all of us with Dish and various cable boxes that don't use the colored buttons should have them on our remotes? Or are you saying that Logitech should make a Direct specific remote?

He's saying that Logitech should put hard color buttons on all the remotes. They already put it on the Euro versions of their other remotes (or most of them). It's becoming a standard for U.S. remotes now.

Yes that is what I'm saying. If they didn't know how widely used colour buttons are becoming,
then their research department needs a thorough shake-up!

I had read that about the Euro versions but didn't realize we were going that direction. Another curiosity question. Are the colored buttons really easier to use than the way the current Dish UI with an on screen option to complete or cancel or whatever? Since I have all new stuff and just had my 70th birthday, hopefully I'll never have to learn anything new from experience LOL

It's always easier to use a single button than multiples - the fact that they're colored makes it easier to customize them for each function and easier to find. e.g. - on my DirecTV DVR when you're in the program guide the red button takes you 12 hours back and the green button takes you 12 hours forward. I don't think there is any other way to do that and since there are no dedicated color buttons on my 720 I had to map two of them to unused hard keys and put the other 2 in the LCD.

By contrast, the red button in the program listing deletes a recorded program. This helps reduce the number of dedicated buttons on all remotes. Satellite and cable boxes are starting to use these more and more.

Makes sense. But when I had Direct, I used a ReplayTV and I have to say, after using Dish DVRs for a couple of years, I miss my RPTV. At least Dish has a 30 second skip like RPTV. And that button takes you forward 24 hours in the guide. You can enter a number and hit the right side of the selection thingy and move that many hours ahead. And I used a sequence to jump ahead 2 minutes. Misses a few commercials anyway.

But whatever we have, it all beats VCRs, huh?

I have a HK-TC30 and DirecTV HR20 DVR ...I just programed the colored buttons on the LCD screen. I just don't have the need to use them that often that not having dedicated hard buttons would be a show stopper.

Not a showstopper, but certainly a bit of a pain, especially if you have more than one page of LCD commands.

The biggest complaint is that Logitech already makes Harmony models with colored buttons for Europe. If they did that here then they wouldn't need 2 separate models and everyone would be happy.

Definitely a pain as they're much less practical there because of the layout and less positive touch. Anyone who uses them a lot will copy them over to spare hard buttons.

Yes, but not a model of the One for Europe! As the colours are now coming into more use outside of Europe they should have done exactly the opposite - include them on all models rather than drop them here.

My satellite provider uses the DVD buttons while in the guide.

FFwd - ahead 6 hours
SkipFwd (next) - ahead 24 hours
Rew - back 6 hours
SkipBack - back 24 hours

you may want to check that out.

I got the One today, and I've been following the progress of the remote for months now. I was always gutted about the hard colour buttons not being there, but it really isn't much of a problem. They're on the screen anyway, but you can also change un-used buttons to be the colours.

I use Sky HD for TV, and it's mainly just Green and Yellow (Planner and Delete). I've got these set to up and down, and it's really easy and quick.

This shouldn't be a reason not to buy the remote, as it really is a superb piece of kit.