Pronto / marantz type remotes - still worth it?
Discussion
I have been trying an older Harmony remote for the last week, and found it really unreliable and frustrating. I much prefer being able to set up proper button - by - button macros like on my ancient marantz rc5400 (rip) rather than being restricted to "activities". Plus I quite liked the programming!
There are plenty of secondhand ones for sale on eBay, so I am thinking of going back in time ten years and getting one. The biggest issue I can see is lack of playstation control (no Bluetooth) but I think basic PS4 media functions can be controlled by a plug-in IR widget.
Am I mad or does the old tech still have the edge when it comes to configurability?
There are plenty of secondhand ones for sale on eBay, so I am thinking of going back in time ten years and getting one. The biggest issue I can see is lack of playstation control (no Bluetooth) but I think basic PS4 media functions can be controlled by a plug-in IR widget.
Am I mad or does the old tech still have the edge when it comes to configurability?
Thanks guys. I read jimbob's post and got straight onto ebay, then read the next one and have flip-flopped the other way!
Can I access some sort of command-by-command programming within the Harmony software? As an example, it was trivial to set up my old remote so that it used the "Sky" command to turn the sky box on, and then the power-off macro used "Sky" followed by "power on/off" to turn it off. 100% reliable, whether sky box had been left on, turned off manually, etc If a unit misses a command then running the whole macro again brings everything back into synch . Harmony uses the power toggle which means it keeps going out of synch with the box. Also, we watch sky more than anything else, and my Pioneer won't switch inputs until it's been on for 30s or so. Therefore I added a "switch pioneer tv to sky input" command to the power off macro, so it's always in sky mode when I turned the system on.
If I could do relatively simple stuff like that I think I'd go for the newer tech, I am probably just ignorant of what can be done but all of the online manuals I've found show the absolute simplest way of getting it working, eg drag - n - drop activities.
Can I access some sort of command-by-command programming within the Harmony software? As an example, it was trivial to set up my old remote so that it used the "Sky" command to turn the sky box on, and then the power-off macro used "Sky" followed by "power on/off" to turn it off. 100% reliable, whether sky box had been left on, turned off manually, etc If a unit misses a command then running the whole macro again brings everything back into synch . Harmony uses the power toggle which means it keeps going out of synch with the box. Also, we watch sky more than anything else, and my Pioneer won't switch inputs until it's been on for 30s or so. Therefore I added a "switch pioneer tv to sky input" command to the power off macro, so it's always in sky mode when I turned the system on.
If I could do relatively simple stuff like that I think I'd go for the newer tech, I am probably just ignorant of what can be done but all of the online manuals I've found show the absolute simplest way of getting it working, eg drag - n - drop activities.
Thanks for all the responses. I weighed up all of the opinions, and then Amazon did a big sale on the Harmony Elite so I bought one 
I love the PS4 controls, but everything else is enormously frustrating. Can anyone help with the issues below?
1) Sky Q box won't turn off. Going into the device menu and pressing power toggle turns it off, so it knows the command, the device is set to "turn off when not in use", "turn off sky box" appears in the "end activity" menu. I've tried relearning the command, creating the activity from scratch, adding an extra "Sky power toggle" command into the end activity command list. It just won't do what I am telling it!
2) Can't operate volume up/down unless I'm already in an activity. If I'm watching TV late at night I turn the volume down before I turn on the sky box etc so it doesn't wake the whole house up. I've tried assigning the volume control to the hard buttons at the bottom of the remote, but those are reserved for smart home items apparently with no way to change them! Can I make them send IR commands?
3) Can't switch TV back to the Sky input as part of the "end PS4" activity. You can only choose from a restricted list of commands in the start/end activity macros, and can't reorder them freely either.
Is there some sort of "I know what I'm doing!" mode to unlock the programming software and let the user work out the command logic, instead of the device trying to work it all out for you and getting it wrong?
I would have posted this on the Harmony forum, but I can't get registration to work on there either!
I love the PS4 controls, but everything else is enormously frustrating. Can anyone help with the issues below?
1) Sky Q box won't turn off. Going into the device menu and pressing power toggle turns it off, so it knows the command, the device is set to "turn off when not in use", "turn off sky box" appears in the "end activity" menu. I've tried relearning the command, creating the activity from scratch, adding an extra "Sky power toggle" command into the end activity command list. It just won't do what I am telling it!
2) Can't operate volume up/down unless I'm already in an activity. If I'm watching TV late at night I turn the volume down before I turn on the sky box etc so it doesn't wake the whole house up. I've tried assigning the volume control to the hard buttons at the bottom of the remote, but those are reserved for smart home items apparently with no way to change them! Can I make them send IR commands?
3) Can't switch TV back to the Sky input as part of the "end PS4" activity. You can only choose from a restricted list of commands in the start/end activity macros, and can't reorder them freely either.
Is there some sort of "I know what I'm doing!" mode to unlock the programming software and let the user work out the command logic, instead of the device trying to work it all out for you and getting it wrong?
I would have posted this on the Harmony forum, but I can't get registration to work on there either!
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