Remote Controls

actually, it turns out newegg sells em. or at least, they should when the 880 becomes widely available. that's one of the warning bells going off in my head -- the 880 is only available at bestbuy right now. some onlineoutfits are clear about this, some are less so.

if newegg has them for 180 or so, i'll go with them on reputation.

 

heh... check this one out:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=71541&item=5779635644&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

scroll to the bottom of his ad -- there's a yellow "please note" followed by dark blue text on a less-dark blue background that reads "pre-order, expected availability 6/15/2005"

 

my wife is on her way to bb to pick up the 880 for my birthday. Told her to wait until next week and the price might go down...nope cant do that. got to have it today.

 

yeah, my anniversary is coming up and that's what i told my wife to get me. but i told her to wait and i'll tell her when to buy. i'm hoping after father's day (gotta be the #1 universal remote sales period) logitech will let other places sell them.

i've got a newegg search bookmarked and i check it daily.

lemme know how it works!

 

the 880 is pretty, but less functional (far fewer buttons)...680 or 688 seems to be the top dog (once the thrill of a color screen that you'll never look at fades).

 

really? i can't see any buttons the 880 lacks... it seems comperable to the 688 (which is the other one with what seems like a logical button layout).

what am i missing?

 

The 676 works great, and is basically the same as the 688, only the buttons are seperated more so they're easier to locate without looking down. Plus it's curved to fit the hand better and has a more a grip feel, not so slick.

But it doesn't make my TV have any better a picture, nor does by stereo sound any better....

 

okay, yeah. that's actually the one i like best from a purely aesthetic view. the 688 buttons are in nice places, but i agree with the seperation aspect. i'm sure you'd get used to it, but still. that one reminds me most of my directivo remote (which is the only other remote i've actually liked).

how does it compare functionality-wise?

edit: and what about battery life? does it go out of sync very often?

 

batteries hasn't died yet, but I'll just keep a set in the charger and swap them out, so that's really a non-issue

it seems to work pretty well, the key is running the activity's so your remote controls things simultanously...to actually go deep into the buttons, you switch to device and scroll through with the next button, but you lose the multi-function of the remote and have to run the activity again

I have a couple of tv's, a couple of onkyo receivers, a combo vcr/dvd player, a dvd recorder, a Sony UltimateTV DVR DirecTV box, a Adelphia cable DVR, a 5 disk cd player, and controls all of them without having to manually learn anything...including play, pause, replay, jump, ff, rw, record, etc...I can even hit the sound button and adjust the volume in seperate channels in the surround sound without getting out of the activity I'm in.

It says it will control 15 devices, but I think you can create more Activities. You have the first 3 and then the Star. Hit that and then the Next button to scroll

 

well..the remote is definately not worth $250. Of course I'm still trying to get it to do basic things right now. tHe rechargable cradle is nice. Still not working my tv correctly. When I press" watch TV" everything turns on and goes to the right setting. About 10 seconds later the tv starts changing inputs. Another thing I dont like is having to scroll through 5 pages of junk to get to my dvr saved program list. Im sure there is a way to to associate the "list" button on my original remote to a a button on the 880.