# Roamio OTA and Logitech Harmony 650?



## rsamos (Aug 20, 2015)

First - hello from a brand new Tivo user. FWIW - I'm loving it (and the Mini)

Either this hasn't been direclty addressed, or my search-fu is horribly weak.

I'm thinking of picking up a Logitech 650 to control my AV receiver, and was wondering if the OTA with the RF remote (series 5) has an IR sensor in it. The Logitech site says the 650 will control an OTA, but I don't know if there's an earlier model that is IR only.

Thanks.


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## krkaufman (Nov 25, 2003)

rsamos said:


> First - hello from a brand new Tivo user. FWIW - I'm loving it (and the Mini)
> 
> Either this hasn't been direclty addressed, or my search-fu is horribly weak.
> 
> I'm thinking of picking up a Logitech 650 to control my AV receiver, and was wondering if the OTA with the RF remote (series 5) has an IR sensor in it. The Logitech site says the 650 will control an OTA, but I don't know if there's an earlier model that is IR only.


You're good. The Roamios (all models) do both IR & RF, as does the later Mini v2. (edit: And it's not one or the other; both protocols are always active.)


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## krkaufman (Nov 25, 2003)

p.s. To toggle the Roamio/Mini v2 remote between IR & RF modes...
Set remote to *IR mode:* press & hold *(C)+TiVo* buttons until LED flashes red

Set remote to *RF mode:* press & hold *(D)+TiVo* buttons until LED flashes amber​


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## rsamos (Aug 20, 2015)

Perfect!

Thanks very much for that.


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## jth tv (Nov 15, 2014)

If you do buy a Logitech 650, please ask Logitech to use a discrete (separate) infrared code for Standby and a discrete code for Resume. Not just a toggle which is what they have for the Logitech 600. Logitech will only add the codes if a customer requests them within their free customer support period, I was too late when requesting it for the 600.

I believe separate codes Might exist since TiVo will only turn on (resume) when the Tivo or Live Button are pressed and TiVo can distinguish between those two. I say might because those are RF codes whereas Logitech would need the infrared.

It is hard to believe that Logitech does not already have discrete codes for Standby and Resume. At some point remotes get out of sync with the devices and Tivo will be Resuming when All Off is pressed, the opposite of what is wanted.


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## thefisch (Jul 25, 2015)

Not sure about the Harmony 650 or 600, but my 880 (that is very, very old) can load older versions of devices to access older remote codes from previous versions. For example, my Denon AVR3312 remote codes on the logitech do not support the dimmer control. So I found an older device (AVR3801) that had that option and added it to all activities just to have that custom button. Haven't need to do that for TiVo as it had all the buttons on the remote plus some not on the remote.


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## rsamos (Aug 20, 2015)

jth tv said:


> If you do buy a Logitech 650, please ask Logitech to use a discrete (separate) infrared code for Standby and a discrete code for Resume. Not just a toggle which is what they have for the Logitech 600. Logitech will only add the codes if a customer requests them within their free customer support period, I was too late when requesting it for the 600.
> 
> I believe separate codes Might exist since TiVo will only turn on (resume) when the Tivo or Live Button are pressed and TiVo can distinguish between those two. I say might because those are RF codes whereas Logitech would need the infrared.
> 
> It is hard to believe that Logitech does not already have discrete codes for Standby and Resume. At some point remotes get out of sync with the devices and Tivo will be Resuming when All Off is pressed, the opposite of what is wanted.


I could certainly ask them for discrete codes once I have the controller (ordered from Amazon this morning). Not sure I'll ever use them, but I can make a request.

Do they toggle power on & off also? That's all I've got for the A/V receiver I'm using. I was a bit concerned about that when I first got it, but my old battle worn Pronto never seemed to have a sequencing issue with it.


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## rsamos (Aug 20, 2015)

thefisch said:


> Not sure about the Harmony 650 or 600, but my 880 (that is very, very old) can load older versions of devices to access older remote codes from previous versions. For example, my Denon AVR3312 remote codes on the logitech do not support the dimmer control. So I found an older device (AVR3801) that had that option and added it to all activities just to have that custom button. Haven't need to do that for TiVo as it had all the buttons on the remote plus some not on the remote.


It will be interesting to see how it does with my hd-dvd player. :facepalm:


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## ej42137 (Feb 16, 2014)

rsamos said:


> I could certainly ask them for discrete codes once I have the controller (ordered from Amazon this morning). Not sure I'll ever use them, but I can make a request.
> 
> Do they toggle power on & off also? That's all I've got for the A/V receiver I'm using. I was a bit concerned about that when I first got it, but my old battle worn Pronto never seemed to have a sequencing issue with it.


If the device has discrete Power-On/Off functions and it's in Logitech's database it will. For example, Panasonic televisions have discrete power functions as well as a toggle, and my Harmony remotes use them instead of the toggle (very nice). My receiver, on the other hand, only has the toggle function, so I find it useful to program a receiver toggle button on my remote menu.

When you program the Harmony remote you can look at the buttons the device supports to see if the discrete power functions are available.


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## rsamos (Aug 20, 2015)

ej42137 said:


> If the device has discrete Power-On/Off functions and it's in Logitech's database it will. For example, Panasonic televisions have discrete power functions as well as a toggle, and my Harmony remotes use them instead of the toggle (very nice). My receiver, on the other hand, only has the toggle function, so I find it useful to program a receiver toggle button on my remote menu.
> 
> When you program the Harmony remote you can look at the buttons the device supports to see if the discrete power functions are available.


Thanks for that. Given that I don't have the 650 yet, I haven't directly seen the programming interface. I've seen a couple Youtube vids that show a simplistic wizard, but that doesn't really give me a sense of what might or might not be possible underneith the wrappers.

Only remote I've programed before has been the Pronto I mentioned. That was pretty simple but still allowed (required) defining the sequence, timing, functions associated with any given button.


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## ej42137 (Feb 16, 2014)

rsamos said:


> Thanks for that. Given that I don't have the 650 yet, I haven't directly seen the programming interface. I've seen a couple Youtube vids that show a simplistic wizard, but that doesn't really give me a sense of what might or might not be possible underneith the wrappers.
> 
> Only remote I've programed before has been the Pronto I mentioned. That was pretty simple but still allowed (required) defining the sequence, timing, functions associated with any given button.


With the Harmony series you don't program it at the lowest level; you tell it what devices you have, tell it what you need to do something (like watch TV with a TiVo), and then answer a bunch of questions to make it work. I think their goal is to make it usable for people who don't think like programmers; whether or not they were successful you will find out as you set up your 650.


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## rsamos (Aug 20, 2015)

ej42137 said:


> With the Harmony series you don't program it at the lowest level; you tell it what devices you have, tell it what you need to do something (like watch TV with a TiVo), and then answer a bunch of questions to make it work. I think their goal is to make it usable for people who don't think like programmers; whether or not they were successful you will find out as you set up your 650.


I'm fairly certain you're right about their goal in the design of the programming interface.

The ironic rub in that is that for those of us that do think like programmers it can look like features & abilities are missing. Somewhat like administrating a Windows system vs. UNIX.

As you said - I'll find out. Amazon swears that I'll have my 650 tomorrow.

And the thing I'm looking forward to the most is mucking about with programming it. *sigh*


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## Chris Gerhard (Apr 27, 2002)

rsamos said:


> It will be interesting to see how it does with my hd-dvd player. :facepalm:


All Harmony remotes will do a great job of controlling any Toshiba HD DVD player.


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## 4d3fect (May 6, 2015)

We've got a 650 controlling our Roamio OTA, no gripes so far, although the Logitech seems to be a bit pickier with directionality, not enough to render it useless.


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## mdavej (Aug 13, 2015)

rsamos said:


> And the thing I'm looking forward to the most is mucking about with programming it. *sigh*


If you like programming, pick up a $16 Nevo C2 from ebay. You can program at the bit level if you want. And it runs circles around the 650. For example it has:

- 15 devices
- 72 favorites, multiple favorites lists
- 6 functions per page
- higher resolution LCD
- programmable hold durations
- pronto hex import
- custom protocols and devices
- convert learns to devices
- IR code analysis tools
- access to JP1 database
- offline programming and infinite number of offline configs

If you want Harmony-style hand holding, it can do that too.

This model originally sold for $150, so it's a hell of a deal. I've got over a dozen of them. Of course it works brilliantly with Tivo and any other IR device you can imagine.

Check out this thread for more info:
http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14804


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## rsamos (Aug 20, 2015)

Thank you!

I'm going to look into grabbing one of those to play with.


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## Chris Gerhard (Apr 27, 2002)

I have several UEI JP1 remotes, although not the Nevo C2 and I can say the remotes are very capable but using JP1 to program the remotes is so painful, I won't do it any longer, instead I use Harmony remotes. The Logitech Harmony remotes blow UEI remotes away for my money. 

I don't have the Harmony 650 but currently my three systems in house have one Harmony remote each, the Harmony One, Harmony 900 and Harmony 700. The Harmony 700 is very similar to the 650 but with rechargeable AA batteries using the USB connection, worth the premium for me.


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## Chuck_IV (Jan 1, 2002)

Chris Gerhard said:


> I have several UEI JP1 remotes, although not the Nevo C2 and I can say the remotes are very capable but using JP1 to program the remotes is so painful, I won't do it any longer, instead I use Harmony remotes. The Logitech Harmony remotes blow UEI remotes away for my money.
> 
> I don't have the Harmony 650 but currently my three systems in house have one Harmony remote each, the Harmony One, Harmony 900 and Harmony 700. The Harmony 700 is very similar to the 650 but with rechargeable AA batteries using the USB connection, worth the premium for me.


+1 to the Harmony 700. Only issue I had was that eventually the power off button got harder and harder to activate till it finally stopped. So I bought a 650 and currently use it, but have another 700 new in the package as backup, since I despise the lack of hard number buttons on Logitech's newest remotes.

They need to take a step back and work on enhancing the Harmony One remote(like adding color buttons). That, IMO, was the best remote they have put out.


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## mdavej (Aug 13, 2015)

The Nevo/Xsight line was a big departure for UEI. They have a wizard based website for configuration just like Logitech, activities, LCD display, the whole nine yards. They also work with JP1 software as well which has improved greatly over the years. 

All my Harmony remotes, including my 600, 650 and 700s are in my closet simply because I can do absolutely anything I want with JP1, which I admit has a steep learning curve. I agree Harmony can't be beat for simplicity, but they lack many of the advanced capabilities posted above.

If anybody has $16 to spare, Nevo would be well worth a try.


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## rsamos (Aug 20, 2015)

Well, my 650 should be here soon so I'll see how that goes for me. 

I may be kind of spoiled by the flexability of the Pronto. I only now replacing it as the software didn't keep up with OS upgrades. I'm probably going to have to build a virtual partition on one of my machines to load an older version of Winderz onto if I want to get it running again.

The Nevo sounds interesting too though. I'll probably try to get the software running on something around here as a first step if I decide to give one of them a shot. 

But baby steps. First I'll make an honest effort to give the Harmony a fair shake.


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## rsamos (Aug 20, 2015)

First attempt at the 650 is an epic failure for wizard driven software. 

I tried keeping it simple, and just had it add an activity for watching TV.

It knew about and added three devices - A projector, A/V receiver, and the Tivo

It sync'd fine. I hit the "watch TV" activity button, and it turned on the projector. That was it. I found the receiver by scorlling through things on the screen and tried the power toggle - no joy. Tried it several times. Picked up the Pronto and it was able to turn the receiver on.

So, I came back to the wizard. Only recourse was to teach the 650 the power toggle function from the original remote. Fine - did that. While I was at it I added volume up/down functions just to be sure.

Sync'd again, and tried the activity again. Projector came on, receiver came on. Input was the wrong one - where I had left it. Scrolled through a bunch of screens in device mode and found an entry that would let me step through the inputs. Again - no joy.

It seems as though Logitech might add devices to the database when all they know is the model number, and that's enough to call it supported.

At first flush, this seems MUCH harder to program than a Pronto - and I'm guessing a Nevo - as you have to work through a wizard and hope they're changing something you can find a control for later.

First impression is a resounding *meh*. I'm sure I'll get it working, but equally as sure it's going to be a pain in the rear.


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## mdavej (Aug 13, 2015)

Nevo has two interfaces: a Harmony-esque one that's equally as clunky and lame and Remote Master which lets you specify exactly what function codes you want as well as every activity step (something Harmony has never allowed). BTW, Remote Master runs on Linux/Mac/Windows.

Having said that, you can usually get Harmony working without any learning by simply trying different models of the same vintage and answering that you don't have the original remote. Some devices will have a full code set while a nearly identical device doesn't. You're at the mercy of whomever learned all the codes in the first place. Logitech appears to make no attempt to fully populate their database for like devices that share the same codes.

Check out my awesome Tivo icons. Can't do that on Harmony 600/650/700.


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## gespears (Aug 10, 2007)

I've had many Harmony remotes and using the harmony desktop software have always been able to go to each button and decide which function from which device in which activity it will control. So I could get it to do exactly what I needed it to do. The only issue I ever had was trying to get their scripts to do much. That didn't work very well. Plus I couldn't get one to last more than a couple of years without the buttons starting to function poorly. But configurability, no issues. Worst case, if a function didn't work correctly for a device, it could learn the IR code from the original remote and then you could assign that code to the button.

This was for the 880, the One, and others. I haven't worked as much with the 650 although I do have one but it worked with very little configuration in the simple application it's used for.


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