I've been a generally happy owner of a Harmony 880 for quite a while now, but enough of the buttons have failed beyond the reach of the various DIY repair techniques that it's become a pain to use. Unfortunately, at least as far as the retail market goes, I haven't seen anything that I'd consider an upgrade or even an equal.

My current default option if nothing else is to "downgrade" to a Harmony 700. I put downgrade in quotes because while it's officially a lesser model and does have reduced device capacity, I consider the rubber buttons and USB charging to be upgrades compared to the 880 since the 880's implementation of both buttons and charging have been weak spots in my experience.

That said, I'm really tired of having to fight with the Harmony software every time I want to do anything slightly outside of what it's designed for. I love Harmony for making this class of remote accessible to the average Joe, but they really need an "Advanced" mode that dispenses with the wizard garbage.

One of my local shops has the URC MX450 which looked interesting, but as far as I can tell only offers codebook or learning type programming rather than computer control. Of course I decide to check out their other offerings, find the MX780 that looks like a perfect modernized version of my 880, and get all excited until I discovered URC's lack of interest in my business.

I also found the Acoustic Research ARRX15G which looked to at least equal the 880, but it seems to be out of production and the user reviews aren't too friendly to the programming software.

The Clicker Picker unfortunately wasn't much help either, its recommendations basically matched what I had already found.


Which leads me here. At the core, what I'm looking for is something that offers me more programming control than a Harmony, without being significantly worse in other ways. The Harmony offers one-touch on/off and switching between devices that works pretty much perfectly barring IR line-of-sight issues and can almost always fix it within the first two tries with the "Help" feature if things do go wrong. I need at least the first part to stay the same, and the second would be nice. Also by offers me more control, I mean me, not a "certified professional installer". I'm a geek, I built a web interface that speaks to my AVR over RS-232 from my HTPC, I can program a remote myself.

Smartphone-based remote apps would seem to be the ideal solution, and I do have a Galaxy S4 which has an IR transmitter for exactly this purpose. Unfortunately, just like with touch screens in cars, on a remote it's nice to have physical buttons so you can operate the controls without looking. When I'm watching a movie I don't want to look down at a display and figure out where to poke, I want to just push the volume button that I can easily find by feel. I'm a more buttons are better kind of guy when it comes to remotes. I like having the LCD with soft keys there for additional functions, but I'd rather not have to use it for anything other than switching devices/activities in a day-to-day situation.


I don't have anything complicated, just a LG TV (Scarlet 52"), Marantz receiver (SR7001), XBMC (MCE remote), and a few game consoles, so any remote worth calling "universal" should have no trouble supporting my hardware. The hard part seems to be finding one that's built well and that I'm allowed to tinker with without going through hoops.