WELA electronic SST-688 Remote Control

This remote made me giggle like a school girl. No I'm not that lame (at least I hope I'm not) but the fact that I can hook this thing up to my Powerbook (Apple Laptop) and see exactly what I'm hooking up and how I'm hooking it up is amazing. Makes you feel very certain you're setting the remote up exactly as it should be. Even more amazing is that it's supported on the Mac. OSX at least. Not very many people support a small audience like the Mac. So when something that works on both PC's and Macs I immediately take notice.

I have a sort of sort of complicated set up where I run volume through my receiver (that's located remotely) and certain items run through certain inputs. I even use a Airport Express through my laptop to play my MP3's wirelessly through my receiver.

Anyhow, the web based step-by-step setup that Logitech has set up is pretty amazing. They've really covered all the bases here. It took me about 45 minutes to set the remote up where I then was asked to test all the items I set up.

Everything seemed to work like a charm until I got to my DVD player. The remote has a HELP button that tells you on the remote screen that it has done something and if it fixed the problem. You answer YES or NO and it does it again until it actually learns and figures out what you're trying to do. This worked great the first time I used it. But when I got to a older VCR remote model I have I had to got back to my laptop and set up the harmony to learn from the old remote. There's a small hole located on the back of the remote that you point the IR of the old remote at. On screen it tells you to press certain buttons like Power or Channel + or Volume, etc... each time you press one a "Learned" confirmation comes up on screen and tells you it captured it. AMAZING!! You then save/upload the program up to your remote and it's fixed. Your whole setup is saved into you online account that is there for you to access anytime. So when you buy a new piece of equipment and add or replace one bit of kit, you can update your profile and save/upload this to your remote and it will reconfigure everything. Again - AMAZING!

Now here's the downside that everyone seems to grumble about. The buttons that allow you to switch between things like "Watch TV" or "Watch a DVD" are quite small. Hard to read too. Since I only use this button once just to switch everything on - I overlook it. You can also select from the on-screen menu what you want to do but the major most used ones are hard buttons. Navigating the screen is sort cryptic sometimes. The rest of the buttons are laid out pretty well in my option. They put a lot of buttons of a remote of it's size. The main buttons like channel and volume are fine. Could be small for older folks but feels good in your hand. It's not too large and clunky. All in all there's some give and takes and the fact that this all in one works soooooo well there are a few things that can (in my opinion) be over looked.

I got mine in Black and it looks like plastic but it's not as cheap looking as a satellite remote. I do wish it was a little more substantial for the money. My friend got it in Silver and it's not bad either. Battery cover fit and finish is a little bad. I'm super happy with the remote. Seems to work perfectly.

The one weird thing though is that switching between things like Watching a DVD and Watching TV it should know that the TV setting is the same for both and shouldn't do anything with the TV. It does. It switches it from Video 1 to Normal and back to Video 1. You get a accurate end result but the TV flashes to a channel and back which is sort of annoying. It maybe the way I set it up so I'm still ironing out the bugs I guess.