The Harmony remotes were never geared towards those satisfied with a TVs crappy built in apps that lose support in a few years and the audio those TVs provide. “In an interview with The Verge in 2019, Logitech's CEO noted that universal remotes weren't as popular, as streaming services built into the best TVs and devices have obviated the need for multiple remotes to control a variety of AV equipment. Ironically the avsforum threads asking for help getting ARC/CEC working correctly are filled with recommendations to give up and just use a Harmony remote. When markets shrink big companies abandon them. My suspicion is that the HT market has imploded due to sound bars/ARC/CEC and I just wasn't paying attention in my old school, giant floor standing speaker theater room with older receiver/amps that don't work right with ARC/CEC. I mean, how much can it cost to manage existing hardware into the same channels they already use for their other products? If Logitech was going to 'support' the Harmony brand any more than I wrote they may have well as stayed in the market with their current product line. If there is a major API change a year or two down the road I would expect Logitech to tell users tough luck. The Verge article talks about how they will continue to support customers, but my educated guess is that means they will update commands for major brands and answer calls/emails about problems going forward as well as keep the alexa/google home integration 'working' as long as a twenty something engineer or two are up to the task. I would guess that asTinCup wrote that the remotes/app/gui's are tied up in patents and copyrights to the point that Logitech doesn't want to spend the legal time/expense to sell it off. For example you could make a macro to put a fire stick to sleep, but that same macro also couldn’t switch inputs or turn off your tv. Just something I thought of after the fact, either I’m dumb or a macro is either IR or Bluetooth based, and you can’t combine them. While I know you could do that with harmony too, I atleast never had to. To go from everything just kind of working, to setting your own button commands with delays was interesting, I personally ended up not using them when I gave the remote to my mom, so it wouldn’t complicate things for her. With macros, you can manually program a specific button to do commands from the various remotes you have programmed, but you do that all yourself, without any guidance, with an app that while decent and in some cases better than harmony it still isn’t incredible. It’s been a while since I’ve done it so excuse me if any of this is wrong, but you put in the model number of your items, harmony runs through a test in the app with you, and if anything doesn’t work Logitech adds delays to the commands until it works. For what I use harmony for (simply turning on my TV, switching inputs, and controlling common devices) everything just kind of works. Macros in Sofabaton can be the equivalent of activities in Harmony. Perhaps tinkerer heavy is the wrong word. I don't know if the 30% coupon they sent was exclusive to me or one-time use, so I won't post it here - but shoot them an email with your questions about the remote, and they might send you one as well. If I don't like it I'm not out a ton of money. Not bad to give it a try and see how it works. Amazon let me use both the 8% coupon AND the 30% coupon - so I got it for $30.99. I added the 8% coupon and added a U1 to my cart, then tried adding the 30% coupon Sofabaton sent me. There's an 8% off coupon on Amazon right now. They also included a 30% off coupon in their response. They come from different suppliers, and listing them like this on Amazon is how they keep track of which one is from which supplier. They basically said all three are identical. I don't see anything in the Amazon listing that notes the differences or what exactly the "Wireless" model is, and there's nothing on the SofaBaton web site that indicates there are three different models of the U1 remote.ĮTA: I emailed the company asking about the three U1 models for sale on Amazon. I understand what Bluetooth and Infrared are, but not sure what "Wireless" is or why it should/would be used vs the model that does both Bluetooth and Infrared.
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