The Logitech Harmony Remote w/ Smart Hub just went on sale for $69.99. This matches the lowest price this remote has ever been, which was during this past Cyber Monday. Harmony remotes are among the few universal remotes that can control the Fire TV and Fire TV Stick. The included hub connects to the Fire TV via bluetooth and the remote relays button press through the hub to the Fire TV. The remote connects via RF, so you still don’t have to physically point the remote anywhere, just like with the Fire TV default remote. Additionally, Harmony created a pair of Alexa Skills, so you can have limited control of your TV with your voice through an Alexa-enabled device.
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Cnet put out a step by step tutorial on how to use Harmony Hub with Alexa to control a home theater setup:
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-logitech-harmony-amazon-alexa-echo/
Already OOS @ Amazon.
I bought it during Black Friday to experiment with the hub and Alexa. It’s still more gimmicky than practical, but it’s fun. I don’t like the remote itself, so I still use my 2 universal remotes mainly. But when I’m in the other room (where I can still see the TV) I like asking Alexa to tell Harmony to increase the volume, or put on sports, or pause.
I’ve been eyeballing one of these based off a friend’s recommendation. I appreciate the heads up on the sale. Hopefully it can help simplify my system.
The harmony Ultimate is the better buy and worth paying the extra. I was lucky to get it from Amazon last September for 53 bucks with the hub.
$286.00 currently for the Ultimate versus the sale price of $69 for this one, yeah that is a little extra. =)
One of the best purchases I’ve ever made being an Echo owner. Everyone in my house can now easily control what’s on TV without having to know which device to turn on and which input to switch to or what channel to change… etc… “Alexa, turn on Amazon TV” or “Alexa, turn on Hockey” or “Alexa, turn on Blu-ray Player” just does it all. The new Harmony skill is great too… “Alexa, tell Harmony to turn up the volume by 4”.
The only downside I can see… is that this version (not sure about the other more expensive options…) only allows you to control 6 devices. Must be an internal memory constraint? Wish I could control everything in my entertainment center, but I have to settle for the 6 most used.
Are you talking about the remote itself only being able to control a certain number of devices? If so, the number is actually 8 for this remote, and there is a way to get past it.
If you can get your hands on one of the more expensive Harmony’s that controls more devices, you can program it, and then import the settings from that remote to the new hub when you set it up. The hub/remote CAN control more devices, Harmony has just chosen to not allow it natively for some reason. But I have 3 programmed with 12 or 13 devices and they work great. Only downside is you can’t manually add a new device until you delete enough devices to get below the 8 limit. So…don’t buy any new devices for a while! (Or do what I did and program devices you might buy, like I programmed the PS4, and XBox One, even though I don’t own either yet!)
Interesting… I was referring to the App that you have to download to program the Remote/Hub with. Once I got to (I thought it was 6, but maybe it was 8?) a certain number of devices the App wouldn’t let me add any more. So I had to decide what the most important were, guess I’ll have to rent/borrow an expensive one to trick my Hub… seems silly to hobble your products for no other reason than to charge more for the same product with a different SKU. Thanks for the heads up!