Helping my sister's husband, who bought this remote - in own use URC HTM MX-700

Some basic questions about this remote
* Can one have on the mainpage ("Device"-button) more than three equipment to select from (whitout pressing "next") - how?
* Can one adjust the order of the equipment? - how?
* Can one adjust the programmable buttons locations/&page - how?
* Can one make own totally macros? (the equipment not most common - need for quite special macro do exist)


If we begin with these - waiting for your good advice

I don't think you can have more than 3 devices on the Device page, but you should not be using the Device page very often. Instead, you need to set up Activities and within the activities you can set up the buttons any way you want, including the commands that appear in the LCD window. This is totally separate from the commands that appear in Device mode.

No - you can't change the device order directly. I think in some cases, but not all, it depends on the order in which they were added but I'm not positive.

If you mean how to change the button mappings, there are 2 options:
For an individual device, go to the device on the web page and select Customize or More Options and then select Customize behavior of buttons. This will change the button mappings when you use the Device key to select a single device.

For an activity, do the same steps. This will change the button mappings when you are in an activity. In this mode you can select commands from all of the devices in the activity. For example, the volume control can operate the A/V Receiver and the Channel up/down can operate the TV. The custom buttons at the bottom of the page are the ones that will show up in the LCD window.

You cannot directly create a macro. However, you don't need to do macros for things like turning equipment on and off or selecting inputs because the harmony activity model will do that for you. And there are workarounds for other scenarios that might require a macro. If you can give us a specific example of a macro you'd like to use we can tell you how to do it or that it's not possible.

Hope this helps.

Devices would be nice to get in order. They have four devices, TV, VCR, digibox & homecenter. The most important is the homecenter and it's oin the second device page.

-o-o-

Do you mean with an "Activity" the buttons on the top "play a DVD" etc.?

The problem is that the equipment, with TV as only exception, only has toggle power.
The VCR and the digibox goes through a small Sony home center (DVD & tuner).

Now the problem is that the Sony will not pass picture signal from Video 2 if video 1 is on. As the digibox is a hard-drive model with own recording option - it has to be in video 2 slot. Then the VCR (not used for recording programs anymore) is in video 1.

Now the toggle power makes life problematic. if VCR is on no picture from digibox.
(Or does the activity buttons have own record of which state a device is currently?)

Also the second problem is source for home center. It dosn't have a ready button for tuner or video 1 - instead one must rotate through tuner-DVD-video1-video2-tuner-....
Also the device remembers on which device it was when power was turned off.
So choosing DVD is somewhat difficult (wherre you on DVD or video2 last time???)

-o-o-

The digibox is used for viewing TV.
(The TV has analog picture tuner, but analog broadcasting is ending in finland next autumn)

So when watching PVR - one should operate the digibox (and have the home center on video 2 input)

And if this wasn't enough troubble - there is one analog channel that isn't available digitally through the digibox. So soemtimes one do want to adjust the TV cahnnels instead.

-o-o-

With button mappings I am looking for a way to force in the programmale buttons (the six around the lcd screen) a specific command (powertoggle) into a spesific place (topleft) - as having this simple command easy accessable

-o-o-

Hope this clarified a little what the problem is - the setting isn't the easiest.
(OK - I hadn't obviously either understand that this remote tries to operate automatically through the activity buttons)

The harmony is the only universal remote that does work with toggles. It has a feature called Smart State that keeps track of the power and input setting on each device and it knows whether a device uses a toggle or a discrete code and it will send the necessary commands. e.g. if the remote is OFF (not in an activity) and you select the first activity and your TV uses a power toggle, it will send the power toggle to turn it on. When you select another activity it knows the TV is already on and won't send the power toggle. If you have a discrete power button for ON it will resend it just to be safe.

Activities - yes, the harmony is designed around activities. Here is what you do:

Go into each Device and set up the power controls. This is where you tell the harmony whether you have a power toggle or discrete controls and which commands do each function.

Go into each Device that has input selection (TV, A/V receiver, VCR, etc.) and set up the inputs. Again you tell it the list of inputs that you have and how you select each one. Even if you get a list of inputs that you must cycle through the harmony knows that, remembers which input it is on and calculates how to get from one to the other.

Now each device knows how to select each input (directly or by scrolling through a list or a combination) and how to manage it's own power.

An activity is simply a unique combination of devices/inputs/settings, so you can have as many as you need. When you create the activity you add the devices that are required and if the device has input selections you tell it which input the device uses for that particular activity. For example:

Watch TV uses the TV, the digibox and the A/V receiver for sound. You tell it which input is required for the TV and the A/V receiver and you tell it you use the TV for display, the A/V receiver for sound and the digibox for changing channels. Now when you select the Watch TV activity the harmony will automatically turn on those 3 devices (if they're not already on), put the TV and A/V receiver on the necessary inputs AND it will automatically setup the volume buttons to control the A/V receiver volume, the channel buttons and number pad to control the digibox, etc.

If you have specific commands that you want to use while in an activity you should add those to the activity buttons so you can access them without having to go into Device mode. You can map any command from any device in an activity to any hard button or to the custom buttons (LCD screen). If your activities are setup correctly you should only be using Device mode a few times a month or less.

For the one TV channel you want to tune directly instead of using the digibox you have 2 options - add commands to the activity buttons to send the TV channel selection commands OR you can add another activity that is identical to the first Watch TV activity except it uses the TV for changing channels instead of the digibox. In that case you just change activities and it will automatically select the right channel and change the channel buttons from digibox control to tv control.

Since you have a 688 you also have a Picture and Sound button that you can use. Pressing Picture is equivalent to selecting the Display (TV) device in device mode but it's a different set of buttons that you can configure separately and access with one button press. So here you could setup the TV channel and volume commands, display modes, etc. Sound works the same way but only for the sound device (TV or A/V receiver). Here you can put in sound fields, speaker commands, decoder settings, etc. It allows you to have easy access to a lot of commands without having to put them on the activity buttons.

Hope this helps. If you have a specific scenario that isn't working let us know and we can probably help you fix it.

Once you get the activities set up you'll be amazed at how easy to use and powerful the harmony is.

Problems solved...

They removed the VCR from the system (as it was quite difficult & it was used quite rarely) even from the setup to DVD-player => only three (3) devices left (=all on page one)
And when finally relised to leave a 5sec delay after TV-ON before other commands it's now working as should.