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right as soon as i opened it i actually found the packaging even for the harmony

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ultimate which is basically a harmony

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ultimate one and a harmony hub in a single package a little intimidating

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with all the space-age looking pieces and wires staring me down when i first

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opened it up my wife actually disagreed but i guess with the kinds of packages

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she encounters on a daily basis it takes more than some 7-inch battery-powered

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gizmo to get her riled up

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with the purchase of a qualifying Intel processor SSD or nuk you could instantly

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win an Intel gaming jersey and be entered in the draw for the ultimate

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system click now to learn more okay so now that we've all recovered from my

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terrible opening joke the first step to getting this baby going is to create an

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account for myharmony.com and download the app for your pc which

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lets you import settings from your hypothetical previous harmony remote

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it detects compatible devices on the network like sonos audio gear and nest

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thermostats then helps you manually add your other devices by part number by the

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way i'd recommend searching the database for your gear before investing in a

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remote to avoid some unpleasant surprises at this stage then once your

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devices are added it guides you through setting up activities so you choose what

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you want to do let's say watch pc for example then you pick out all the

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devices and inputs that are associated with that activity and in theory when

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you trigger the activity on the remote all the appropriate stuff should turn on

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and everything else should be off all right so

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obviously this isn't going to do anything here so let's go on a field trip to see

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how it all works in the real world alright so here we are at my house my

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devices are a samsung 52 inch not smart so i guess a dumb tv a Windows media

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center pc with the microsoft dongle for

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ir i've also got an onkyo receiver a wii

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and a ps4 as well as a chromecast plugged into the back of the receiver so

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i added the chromecast on the ps4 just to make this video a little bit more

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interesting so front and center right here is the harmony hub it's an ir

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blaster and rf receiver it's a wi-fi

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client i'm pretty sure it's got bluetooth too the objective is for it to

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be able to pick up an rf signal from the remote and blast the other ones mostly

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ir to everything that the remote wants to control now ir signals will bounce

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around and often hit whatever they need to but if you have a door in front of

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your device or for whatever reason it can't hit it you can use one of the two

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included mini ir blasters in order to

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amplify the signal or reposition it i found that the hub couldn't hit my

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receiver normally but actually positioning a mini blaster here and here

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took care of it so everything is able to be hit so let's change gears for a

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second and have a look at the remote it sits in a handy little charging dock and

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has your standard media control buttons on top navigation buttons on the bottom

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and then some programmable buttons on the very bottom the middle is dominated

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by a touch screen that turns on when you pick up the device with an accelerometer

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you can use that to tweak many of the settings that otherwise you'd use the my

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harmony application to change and then sync to the remote it's a process that

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takes about 20 to 30 seconds from here you can turn off the annoying lock

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screen and even more importantly use it to launch your activities and execute

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context appropriate commands that are a bit more complicated than play or volume

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up all right so enough with the let's click watch pc

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it turns on the tv changes the input powers up the receiver and finally wakes

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the computer from sleep then if i press exit once it's actually done completely

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waking up it shuts the whole thing back down now

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for devices like the playstation 4 and chromecast they'll still rely on their

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own remotes so a controller or a phone

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to wake up but i still find configuring them with the harmony ultimate extremely

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useful because it lets you make much better use of the available inputs on

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your setup now so let's go ahead and turn it off

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my receiver only has two HDMI inputs but

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with one button i can mix and match tv

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HDMI inputs and receiver audio inputs now in a way that would normally be

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pretty cumbersome to navigate and involve changing inputs here then

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changing inputs here making sure the volumes are leveled and all that kind of

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stuff so i'm using the playstation 4 that way with an HDMI input on the tv

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and then an optical audio in set to i think cd or something like that because

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who still has cds on the receiver i'm sure someone does and i'm very sorry

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okay so looks awesome right well hold on don't throw your money at the screen

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yet it took a lot of tinkering to get it this way first of all and i must be an

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idiot right when i wanted to add my pc i

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clicked add a pc instead of entering the

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part number of my ir receiver or

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manually searching for microsoft media center se or something like that it took

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30 minutes with tech support to figure out why my pc wasn't getting any

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commands but at least there's good news and that's that if you do the media

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center se trick you can bind your programmable buttons to commands like

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alt f4 or other shortcut keys so that i can use this handy little sound

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switching app that i have to switch between my speakers and my wireless

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headphones so that's kind of cool so then i set out to get the wii working

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and i ran into challenge number two the default timing for tv input switching

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would cause it to fail so here i'm going to go ahead i'm going to switch to the wii right now would cause it to fail to

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switch if i powered the whole thing off

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while i was on a different input and fired up a different activity and then switched to the wii so i had to increase

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the power delay time from 8.5 to 12

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seconds to make this work every time not a huge deal just not amazingly user

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friendly challenge number three was getting it to work with the wii as

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advertised beyond just setting the right inputs at all i looked at every guide i

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can find and i still can't figure out how to connect to it via bluetooth so

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the harmony hub can actually power it on instead of me having to do it manually

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but truthfully i'm not even sure if i want to because i'll always need a

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wiimote to use the thing anyway and apparently some games require the remote

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to be unbound in order to work anyway so

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you're going to be constantly switching which ties into my last challenge just

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because something is supported doesn't mean it's not a bit janky i don't have a

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nest or philips hue lighting system so i can't comment on those but the sonos

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control is nothing special it automatically stops playing if i start

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another activity normally this would be desirable because you wouldn't play ps4

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and pc games on the same tv at the same time unless you wanted the universe to

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implode but the sonos is different i could actually want to play games and

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have ambient music and aside from that it can't even browse my music services

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or anything it just dumbly provides basic playback controls for whatever i

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last set up on my pc or phone but speaking of phones that leads into

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some positive stuff myharmony.com's cloud syncing means that

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enabling your harmony's functionality on other devices such as an iphone or

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Android phone is actually super simple

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just fire up the app so i'm gonna actually do this live we're gonna do a

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live demo holy crap it's amazing uh so you fire up the app and as long as

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you've set it up so your devices all take input from the hub

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rather than directly from the ir blaster on the remote ir blaster positioning is

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key here you can actually use gestures

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to here i'm just gonna i'll power watch pc off because that's the main thing i

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actually do instead of you can use gestures or buttons to do all this stuff

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on your phone instead so

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i guess at this point then it's conclusion time question number one is

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it awesome the answer yes it is i can just sit down and relax

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instead of hunting for remotes and i'll never have to hear why did you spend all

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this money i can't even use it because it never works

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but question number two could i throw away

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all of my other remotes the answer is no for this config i would still need my

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sadeco air mouse and keyboard my wiimote

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and my ps4 controller and finally question number three the

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big one is this worth over three hundred dollars hmm

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i've spent enough time juggling remotes in my life that i'm pretty good at it

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and there's no way i would spend that kind of money on this for myself but

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that doesn't mean that it won't be worth it for some people this product despite

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its difficult setup has an amazing ease

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of use once it's already configured that is just made for tech dad or tech son to

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buy for their family and then set it up for them and not get phoned or woken up

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in the middle of the night anymore because someone can't watch their favorite show oh yeah it does tv too but

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i wasn't going to subscribe to cable just to demo that so and even though

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this tech dad couldn't get it working without help i do have to give props to

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their support which is open on saturday in canada they actually got me sorted

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out reasonably quickly so that's pretty much it it wins the i

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wouldn't buy one but i know a dozen people it would be perfect for award

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speaking of things i unfortunately can't buy because they happen to be u.s only

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up for ting after watching our spots let us know how it's going so far on twitter

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it's at Linus tech anyway guys like this video if you liked it dislike

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