by Dan Moren
First, do no Harmony
Late on Friday, as befits disappointing news, Logitech announced that it would be discontinuing its Harmony remote line:
While Harmony remotes are and continue to be available through various retailers, moving forward Logitech will no longer manufacture Harmony remotes.
We expect no impact to our customers by this announcement. We plan to support our Harmony community and new Harmony customers, which includes access to our software and apps to set up and manage your remotes. We also plan to continue to update the platform and add devices to our Harmony database. Customer and warranty support will continue to be offered.
This is real shame. I love my Logitech Harmony remote, and have bought them for my family in the past as well. This isn’t to say that the Harmony was awesome, just that it was better than any other option I’d tried.
But this demise has probably been a long time coming: a lot of people have fewer devices hooked up to their TVs now, many bundled remotes can control multiples devices, and technologies like HDMI-CEC have helped eliminate some needs for universal remotes.
Meanwhile, rumors have it that Apple is redesigning the Apple TV remote. In the past, the company designed its remote to essentially work as though the Apple TV was the only thing of import connected to your TV; thus it could control the volume of the system it was attached to or turn it on and off…but that was about it.
Personally, I’ll be clutching tight to my Harmony remote for a while yet. Earlier this year, when my Logitech Smart Control remote’s left d-pad button stopped working, I went to try and replace it and noticed they were out of stock on Amazon. Instead, I bought a competing device that was…not great. Luckily, my pal Lex Friedman had the exact same remote as me that he wasn’t using, shipped it over, and now I expect I’ll be able to get a few more years out of this.