Forbidden love: Logitech Harmony 700

This remote right here is the best and super-awesomest invention known to my living room.  While I could stop there, and I probably should (seriously, just stop reading now), let me count the ways that it is the best ever.

1. You can finally put away all those different remotes and just use this one.  The end.

Before if I wanted to watch TV I would need at least two remotes, the receiver remote  and the satellite remote (that also turns on the tv).  If the input on the TV had been on anything but the TV input I would need a third remote.  Likewise, if I was firing up the xbox to watch some netflix or some downloaded TV shows, again I would need three remotes.  

Not so anymore, compadre (which is spanish for "herder of remotes").  You setup the remote by telling it what devices you have, what components do what, and what inputs your components should be on.  Bam, instant awesome.  There are many different models in the Logitech Harmony line, I chose this one because it was just $60 refurbished and it did everything I wanted.

The only small issues I've had so far are there was some initial panic when it didn't work with the satellite receiver (I needed to change the receiver to IR mode, not UHF mode), and when switching from a full powered off system and doing an activity that changes the TV input, you usually have to do the activity twice as the TV is slow to start up and it can't receive the change input commands.  There may or may not be a way to change this, but honestly it's not a big deal since I know it's going to happen.

Even Amber knew how to fix the problem, though so I can say the remote is very intuitive.  I honestly kick myself for not buying one earlier.