I recently bough an Harmony 650, and first let me say that in the end I was able to program it to do everything I wanted, even the non standard stuff, so congratulations on a great product!
This being said, I had done all my research before and had learned in advance of most of the issues I could encounter. Customer reviews show that many people find the process of setting the remote overly complicated, so I though I would offer my feedback on the things I agree could be improved to make the setup easier and more coherent.
This is offered not as a criticism, but as a help to improve the Software for this amazing product, so more people can decide to keep it and enjoy it.
1) First off, the booklet in the box. The first thing you read (“what to expect”) is go to the site, create your account and setup your device. Unfortunately, you go to the site, and there is nothing there offering you to create an account, and nothing talking about setting up a new remote. You don’t even always get to the same page. Sometimes it lists several things, like register product, downloads… sometimes you get to FAQ. This is clearly confusing. Ultimately later in the booklet it hints to the fact you need to download the software, but it could be made a lot clearer.
Suggestion:
In the Booklet the first thing you read about setting up your remote should clearly say that you will first need to download the harmony Software here… then after running the installation, you will be asked to create an account and start the configuration of your remote
On the site you are sent to, there should be in bold: To start setup your New Harmony remote, download and run the installation of the harmony software. With the download button right there. Make it clear and unambiguous J
My setup included a TV, a cable Box, a Media center PC, and an old VCR I rarely use, but though I would setup anyway.
2) Adding the devices went OK, except for the following. You get a drop down list for everything except the actual model number. I think this is a potential source of difficulty, especially for the Media Center for which it is not trivial to know exactly what you should select. I was first prompted to select my manufacturer with a list of PC makers, but that was not the way to go. I then tried using Microsoft (which was the way to go), but then it is not clear what to put in for the model number. Because I had done researched before hand, I new there was actually several possibilities, from entering the IR receiver model, to selecting some special model names like the MCE keyboard, or the media center SE. But let us be honest, without research beforehand, I would have had no way to figure that out following the setup SW
Suggestion:
Having the choice of a drop down list for the models would be helpful.
When selecting Media Center, an explanation should popup to explain how to select Media Center models, and especially explain about extended instructions set like keyboard and SE.
On top of that all the instructions available in keyboard and SE should be included inside the base Media Center instruction set. It makes no sense to have to select several Media Center devices in order to have access to all the functionality.
3) The Watch TV for watching TV with my cable box went fine, except for one thing. My TV needs a Power ON delay of 15 sec, and I could not find how to actually do that anywhere. I had to do some searching in the forum to discover that this option was only available by pressing the Help button on the remote. This is the kind of inconsistency that create road block for the end user.
Suggestion:
The Power ON delay option should appear in the Device Option list. If for some odd technical reason it can only be set on the remote, the option should still be in the list, and when selecting it, it should explain how to do it.
4) Then I hit a problem with setting watching movies for which I need to use my Media Center. The Software would only allow me to select the VCR as the source for watching movies. In order to be able to choose the Media Center, I had to delete the VCR device…
Suggestion:
This is clearly a Bug, Media center should be acknowledged as a potential source for everything (Movies, Videos, DVDs, music….)
5) Then I needed to create an activity for watching BluRays from the PC. Because my BluRay program is not integrated in Media Center, I just needed it to switch on the TV to PC Input and load the Media Center keys. Unfortunately, following the initial setup, I was forced to select a source input for Media Center. The choice of not selecting an input was not available there. But when finishing the initial setup, then going back to the setup program, I did have in the list the ability to say that I did not want to select any input for the source.
Suggestion:
This looks like an inconsistency in the setup program. It makes it confusing, and make people think they are not going to be able to do something, forcing them to dig around in hope to find the right way to do it (which is a tendency with the configuration SW). These inconsistencies should be tracked down and removed; it would help make things a lot easier to the end user.
Two last small remarks.
I noticed that the only way to really get control over an activity creation is to choose Utility / generic. So I would actually rename that Utility mode to something like Full Control Mode, which would be more accurate.
After creating my login account in the setup software, I went to the forum to post, only to find out I could not login to the forum with it, but had to create one there too. This does not seem very logical; when creating a setup logiin account, it should automatically be your forum login too.
That is it for my first impressions, Again congratulations on a great product
