finally understand remotes--what's better?

[dfitz43]

Hi all,
I've been using Sage for about 6 months, works great, HD streaming over LAN is pretty excellent. Haven't really bothered setting up a remote (been using Lite-on airboard), but the WAF was really plummeting, so I finally got this (slightly) sorted out. I'm just wondering about the pros/cons of what I understand to be the two basic setups:

1) I have a USB-UIRT and a Harmony 880. After fooling around with logitech's crappy website and advice from here, I realized that I could select any device that uses most of the buttons and then just assign those IR codes directly to Sage. This worked quite nicely, though I guess I need to set up some soft buttons for keys that I don't have.

2) What about just programming my Harmony with the airboard keyboard shortcuts for Sage? Is there a reason that this would be superior to method #1? I guess I can think of two reasons: a) I could dispense with the USB-UIRT and just use the airboard receiver b) I could use a keyboard shortcut to wake from an S3 suspend.

It took me a little while to grasp the mechanics of these two different methods. Just one of those things that until you do it yourself (at least for me, anyway!), it just wasn't that obvious when I read about it.

Anyway, I'm interested to hear about pros/cons of the two methods from those far more advanced than I. FWIW, I'm just interested in basic control of my devices, no Girder or other nonsense to muck up the works (though I realize that people have done some amazing things with the various 3rd party apps).

Thanks in advance.

cheers,
Dave

[lovingHDTV]

So what does Harmony do to the remote when you tell it you are using SageTV? Does it not do something in setting up the remote?

If not I wonder if you could tell it you are using MCE and it would set the remote to a default MCE setting.

In either case I would assume you then link the remote command to Sage via the settings. I've been looking at that remote and have had the same questions. Hopefully someone here using that setup can say.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by dfitz43

2) What about just programming my Harmony with the airboard keyboard shortcuts for Sage?

If I'm not mistaken, the keyboard emits separate codes for key down and key up. So you'd have to be able to program the Harmony to emit both of those codes on one button push. For Ctrl+key combinations, the Harmony would have to emit four codes on one push (Ctrl down, key down, key up, Ctrl up).

[dfitz43]

Originally Posted by lovingHDTV

So what does Harmony do to the remote when you tell it you are using SageTV? Does it not do something in setting up the remote?

Well, I thought that using one of the Sage profiles would be smart, too. I selected SageTV version 4.10, thinking that hey, all my codes would just be built in just like my fixed devices.

The thing is (warning: approaching limit of my meager understanding here) that Sage doesn't have any pre-defined IR codes it's expecting, unless you're using the Hauppage or Streamzap remotes (please correct me if this isn't true).

So basically selecting a SageTV profile just downloads to your Harmony some profile with various random IR codes mapped to buttons which are reasonable for a PVR remote.

You still have to go through the step of linking these various IR commands to functions within sage (Setup/Detailed Setup/Command/Link IR commands, I think, off the top of my head).

I also found that selecting the SageTV profile in the Harmony web setup resulted in several inactive buttons (that didn't emit any IR per Sage). Someone else pointed out that it's helpful to pick a PVR profile which has all the buttons active, like a DVD/Tivo combo.

[dfitz43]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

If I'm not mistaken, the keyboard emits separate codes for key down and key up. So you'd have to be able to program the Harmony to emit both of those codes on one button push. For Ctrl+key combinations, the Harmony would have to emit four codes on one push (Ctrl down, key down, key up, Ctrl up).

Hmm, I didn't realize that there were discrete key up/down codes, but I guess that makes sense if you need to know the duration of a key press.

I'm pretty positive that the Harmony can map the keyboard commands without a problem, though. I know I've read on here that people have done this.

I'm still a bit confused on the merits of direct IR with USB-UIRT vs. mapping IR keyboard commands to my airboard receiver. Does it just really not matter in the end?

cheers,
Dave

[digitalgm]

Dave,

I have a wireless keyboard (Logi DiNovo) and mouse that I keep next to the couch when I want to enter things on the screen. They are BlueTooth (RF) and function very well as I am sure your wireless keyboard does. Instead of trying to replicate keyboard functionality with your remote, I would suggest letting the remote do what it was meant for. With my setup I used an old Sony DVD remote (very high quality and tons of buttons) and just mapped all the buttons that I needed in sage to something. You could do the same thing with your Harmony remote but you first have to give it a command set. I would suggest just telling the harmony to control a Sony DVD player or even a Tivo (Gasp). Then go into the Sage screen where you can map the remote presses (from the UIRT) and map them to functions in Sage.... Easy!

--Regards, AdamR