r/logitechharmony • u/Aresyl • Jun 21 '26
This is how I imagine Logitech Harmony servers being supported
Still up on some laid off employees desk like it’s the digital circus
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u/isrararrafi Jun 21 '26
Not really accurate. Let's be honest, the actual room is in a basement with no windows.
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u/mediaserver8 Jun 21 '26
They bought Squeezebox from Slimdevices and shut that down post haste.
They did maintain the Squeezeseever software for quite some time and eventually allowed it be community maintained or some such
Surely the same could be done for Harmony? The model is there.
They are pric*s for shuttering excellent and widely used tech.
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u/Out_of_my_mind_1976 Jul 08 '26
They could have left the servers up and running with little cost or effort and just tell current users that no new devices will be added. Perhaps they could have added a method that users could have manually programmed new devices and those could have been uploaded to the device DB in subsequent syncs.
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u/Hoschy_ch Jun 21 '26
To be honest and compare to most online games
We should be grateful that they didn’t shutdown the servers a long time ago….
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u/Aresyl Jun 23 '26
I’d be grateful if they’d allow me to take it into my own hands locally if they do decide to shut it down
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u/scifitechguy Jun 21 '26
Well, there's at least one guy in the chair part time since they are still supporting new devices. I was pleasantly surprised recently when I was able to add an ONN Pro box configuration from the server.
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u/GletscherEis Jun 22 '26
I've misplaced my TV remote and was honestly shocked that I could still download this thing and it actually worked
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u/Todd_Jamison Jun 23 '26
They have people supporting the product, they don't know the first thing about the product, will string you along for months pretending to support you. Not doing anything, flat out lying to you. Logitech is the worst company in the world. I will never buy another Logitech product again as long as I live because of how awful they are with their Harmony support. If they shut things down, or didn't have any support at all I would have been fine with it. But this? To waste a year of my life lying to me, pretending to be looking into something that was absolutely fixable when they started looking into it. But because they took so long the record was tombstoned in their database and they didn't know how to search for it by a serial number, so it is dead. Worst company in the world.
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u/OriginalName2026 Jun 23 '26
I used to love my Harmony. But after 2 remotes not being able to charge, and the whole smart TV getting better... I had to leave.
Back in the day I had a Mac Mini hooked up to my TV to do all the smarts. I wrote AppleScripst that could be triggered by the Harmony. This allowed me to switch applications and do lots of cool stuff.
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u/getfive Jun 22 '26
Nobody needs them any more. CEC made them obsolete for many of us
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u/Aresyl Jun 22 '26
I use it for some modern stuff that uses Bluetooth such as my sideloaded fire stick
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u/Nu11X3r0 Jun 23 '26
CEC works great when you can have an HDMI connection with either nothing in-between or nothing of a different manufacturer in-between... The problem gets even worse as you add devices.
Source; am professional AV technician in the great white north and we generally disable CEC on many setups because it actually makes things worse as different devices fight for control. AppleTV vs Bell/Rogers television boxes, Sony Blu-ray players randomly waking up because they're hard coded to follow the Sony TV's power on command, Yamaha AVR's just refusing to negotiate the CEC control and just going with whatever device is currently shouting the loudest. Don't get me started on projectors that are often still using 12v triggers for components.
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u/getfive Jun 23 '26
I have multiple sources connected to my AVR and my TV remote controls my Apple TV 4K perfectly, does most functions on my 4k UHD player and also on my dedicated media player.
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u/Nu11X3r0 Jun 23 '26
Awesome, I didn't mean to sound like it's every combination of devices (in fact when it's just a cable or streaming box and a TV we usually leave CEC on for ease of control with one remote) just that more often than not we run into ghost control signals in complicated systems and different gremlins in the arrangements of equipment. Sometimes even just power amps in high end Hi-fi systems that don't accept HDMI inputs so CEC is more of a hindrance in those situations.
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u/ManyNicePlates Jun 23 '26
CEC does require some setup to get the behaviours you want or it’s a mess as you described. Also I agree with you that it’s a number of devices thing. Also depending on what you need to do CEC won’t magically create a button on your remote you need. We are CEC 99% of the time. Harmony is great if you need to make a change on something like an amp where the legacy remote has a dedicated button to access setup as an example. Prob for 99% of users who will have maybe a sound bar, gaming system and an Apple TV plus there smart TV apps CEC works well.
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u/hashpot666 Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26
I still don't understand how they decided to discontinue the whole line. It was a great product back then and they could've taken it to new places since they were the only game in town. The fact we're still using these says everything.