Darryl Wilkinson

Price: $250 At A Glance: Exceptionally intuitive • Web-based setup procedure • Help function uses questions and answers to fix system problems • Programmable power-on, inter-key, inter-device delays

Pretty and Pretty Smart

I don’t know what they put in the water cooler at Logitech, but I want to start drinking it. The Harmony One is another in its long list of affordable universal remote controls. It looks great, is easy to program, and is sweetly simple to use. The Harmony One is as narrow as most single-device remotes, but it’s thinner and surprisingly light. It’s even easier to hold and use. At the business end is a bright 1.25-by-1.5-inch color touchscreen with enough resolution that you can easily recognize the tiny DVD logo on the DVD player icon. The backlit hard keys are distinctly grouped together by function (transport, numeric keypad, etc.). Although the individual keys are only slightly larger than those on an average remote, each has its own unique shape and is spaced far enough apart so that you can easily use the remote for basic operations without looking at it. The Harmony One includes a built-in motion sensor that’s supposed to wake the remote when you pick it up. It’s not super sensitive, though, so sometimes you’ll need to give the remote a quick shake to bring it to life. To recharge the battery, just place the remote in its horizontal charging cradle. My older Harmony 890 is sometimes finicky and refuses to make contact—and therefore doesn’t charge—when resting in its cradle. This one has a deeper well that ensures a solid connection between the contact points on the remote and the charging cradle. By the way, the rechargeable battery is removable and replaceable, much like a cordless phone’s battery. This makes it environmentally friendly, and it won’t force you to buy a new remote when the battery finally expires.

When you've come to CES as many times as I have, of course you've got baggage - serious mental baggage. At least, as a wonderful byproduct of my job, I can look like a happy idiot taking pictures of the baggage concourse sign in front of hundreds of other people who simply want to get their luggage and get away from me.

Aton’s HDR44 can take four HD (up to 1080p) or SD sources along with their associated audio signals (plus pass IR commands) and distribute them to up to four zones using dual Cat 5 cables. If that’s not enough for you, you can add a second HD router and expand the distribution up to eight zones; although four sources is still the limit. The $1,899 HDR44 Kit includes one HD Video Router, 4 surface-mount receivers, and a system remote control. Additional routers are $1,299.

Remote control behemoth manufacturer Universal Remote Control is now offering control dimmers, lamp dimmers, and switches that work with a large number the company’s universal remote controls. The dimmers and such are made by lighting behemoth manufacturer Lutron specifically for URC. The system is ideal for single rooms (like home theaters) or small homes, and I’ve never seen a system in which it was so easy to program various lighting control scenes. It literally takes minutes and you’re done. Dimming switches are around $150 each, but there’s nothing extra that’s needed to make the remote controls work with the switches.