Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
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David Heath
Monday, 16 March 2009 14:10
In the lounge room (the entertainment hub of the family home!) we have an eight-year-old TV, a HD set-top box and a combined DVD / VHS player (both less than 12 months old).
After much scrambling around the back of the devices, peering through dimly-lit reading glasses, I managed to get the model numbers.
Installing the software, I'm asked to create an account on the Logitech web server – presumably this will permit me to update the Harmony anywhere in the world. Once done, I am invited to identify my devices – that's easy, thanks to my previous scrambling (wishing that every manufacturer would write the model number clearly on the front!). Fortunately, the Logitech servers agree that they know all about my devices; even the geriatric TV.
Next, I'm invited to define activities. I choose to create "watch TV," "play a DVD" and "Play a VHS tape."
These are relatively simple to create and mostly successful.
Unfortunately, it's the 'mostly' that exposes the shortcomings.
Most AV device remotes have an on/off button that toggles the power state of the device. Unfortunately, if the Harmony guesses wrong, it sets the power state of a device the opposite of what it should be. Sure there is access to the raw remote buttons but this seemed to happen more often than I'd like.
Alternately, there is a 'help' function that is available after each activity selection which allows the user to re-activate each subcommand should any of them prove erroneous.
Similarly to the on/off issue, I discovered a personal problem - my DVD/VHS player seems to need a press of the 'input' button to revert to TV only after playing a DVD; if I stop a tape, it happily reverts to TV without intervention. This is a problem for the Harmony. The only way I found to get to TV after a DVD is to momentarily play a tape (assuming one is in the player, of course).

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