#56 - Install an IR remote repeater

OK, this one is pretty boring, unless you are a woman (Denise) who wants her husband (me) to clean up all the A/V remote controls and what not that are piled on the coffee table.

As some may know, we somewhat recently installed new cabinets in our family room and the cable box, Xbox 360, etc. are now all housed inside the cabinets.  I have remote controls for the TV, cable box, sound system and Xbox and need at least three of the four for any given activity.  (Well, that's not entirely true - I only need one remote if I want to listen to my iPod through the Yamaha sound bar.)

Anyway, all of the remotes use infrared, which does not work through a closed cabinet door.  So in addition to the clutter of the remotes all over the room I add the clutter of the open cabinets anytime we're watching TV.

So, this week I bought a Logitech Harmony 700 universal remote control along with a Harmony IR Extender System, basically a set of doohickies with an IR receiver that you mount outside the cabinet and some IR transmitters that you mount inside the cabinet with the AV equipment.  The receiver catches the IR commands from the remote control and relays them to the emitters inside the cabinet and, voila, the equipment responds to your remote's plaintive infrared cries.

The universal remote controls all the devices, automagically selecting the right combination of features for any requested activity.

Want to watch TV?  Push the "Watch TV" button and the remote turns on the TV, selects the HDMI input, turns on the cable box and turns on the sound system.

Switch to a movie?  Push "Watch a Movie" and it turns off the cable box, turns on the Xbox, selects the correct input on the TV and now you're ready to stream Netflix.

An added benefit of the new remote control is that it eliminates use of the game controller when streaming movies with the Xbox.  I felt like a moron controlling movies with the joysticks and triggers and miscellaneous buttons on the controller.  Now I can watch movies with the standard tool of the couch potato trade.