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Logitech Harmony 650

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I’ve known about the Logitech Harmony remotes for years, but always held off getting one due to price, and overall concern about functionality. But two weeks ago, I saw Costco had the Harmony 650 on sale for $56, and figured I might as well give it a try. And to cut to the chase, I can’t believe I waited so long.

A decent universal remote often costs $40-50, and programming it consists of either looking through the manual and finding the codes for each device you have, or worse, training the universal remote certain commands by pointing your OEM remote at it, and having the universal “learn”. Extremely tedious. And while the Logitech setup process is a bit awkward, it’s lightyears ahead of other options. For the 650, you install some software, and then plugin the remote via USB, and go through a website wizard to program the remote. This consists of setting up each device you have by make and model. The 650 limits you to 5 devices, which is fine since I only have 3 for this setup (TV, Cable Box, and Apple TV). After this is done, you set up tasks, like “Watch TV”. The wizard asks things like “which device changes channels” and “which device controls volume”, etc. Basically, you’re setting up Macros. When you’re all done it uploads that info to the remote (as well as updates the firmware if there’s an update), and you’re ready.

On the remote, you say “Watch TV” and it then turns on the TV, and cable box, and you get volume on the TV, channels on the box, and it all just works. The only thing I had to do was manually assign the day forward/back buttons for going through the Guide on the Cable Box, since they previously were hard to get to soft buttons on the screen. And the only issue other than that is a limitation of IR, in that the remote has no clue if the TV/Cable Box, is on or off. So if you forget, and turn your TV off manually, you can get in this state where the remote thinks everything’s cool, but the TV is off, and the cable box is on. This is easily fixed through the remote’s screen, and toggling the power on whichever device is the “off” one.

For less than $60, to get a remote that just works, and I don’t have to switch between things, it’s great! If I ever upgrade, I’ll go to an RF based one, but for now, IR works fine by me.
[xrr rating=4.75/5]

Steve Jobs

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While the web is filled with memorials, testimonials, quotes, etc about Steve’s passing, I figured it only appropriate that I say something… since while I am a System Administrator by profession, I am a Mac user by lifestyle. From the computers I’ve used at home since I was 5, to the servers I work with today, I work with Apple hardware. I’ve always loved Apple hardware, even when they made rather uninspiring devices during period between Steve Jobs’ leaving, then returning to Apple. I wouldn’t call myself a cultist, but I would call myself a skeptical believer. Apple has made some missteps in my mind (killing the Xserve, the rather drastic changes in 10.7 server, etc), but I do believe that what they do they do because they truly believe “this is how it should be”. It’s not just a “this will make us money” or anything like that. Steve, and Apple, both thought they were taking something that was imperfect, and bringing it closer to perfection. And he realized that perfection was out there, somewhere just beyond reach, so you had Apple products that evolved from generation to generation.

What hit me yesterday was that Steve basically bookended his career with the birth, and the (arguably) death of the personal computer. The Apple I/II, and the Macintosh were largely the birth of the real personal computer, and with the release of iOS 5, you have an iPhone, iPad that can be used PC free, which some argue has brought about the end of the PC era. I’m not sure if I agree with that, but it certainly is a step toward the lifestyle where we may have an actual computer at home, or work, but day to day, our lives will largely be played out on phones, tablets, etc. This is already the case for most of us, and will only become more so for others as time passes.

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Netflix

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A lot has been going on at Netflix as of late. First they raise prices by up to 60% in some cases. Now, they’ve come out and said “oops, our bad, we raised prices because we’re splitting the company into two orgs, one for streaming (Netflix), and one for DVD-by-mail (Qwikster ((Let’s not even get into the fact that the name is an abomination of English))).

Excerpt from email sent to all Netflix subscribers:

For the past five years, my greatest fear at Netflix has been that we wouldn’t make the leap from success in DVDs to success in streaming. Most companies that are great at something – like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores – do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us). So we moved quickly into streaming, but I should have personally given you a full explanation of why we are splitting the services and thereby increasing prices. It wouldn’t have changed the price increase, but it would have been the right thing to do.

So here is what we are doing and why.

Many members love our DVD service, as I do, because nearly every movie ever made is published on DVD. DVD is a great option for those who want the huge and comprehensive selection of movies.

I also love our streaming service because it is integrated into my TV, and I can watch anytime I want. The benefits of our streaming service are really quite different from the benefits of DVD by mail. We need to focus on rapid improvement as streaming technology and the market evolves, without maintaining compatibility with our DVD by mail service.

So we realized that streaming and DVD by mail are really becoming two different businesses, with very different cost structures, that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently.

It’s hard to write this after over 10 years of mailing DVDs with pride, but we think it is necessary: In a few weeks, we will rename our DVD by mail service to “Qwikster”. We chose the name Qwikster because it refers to quick delivery. We will keep the name “Netflix” for streaming.

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