My HTPC has eliminated a few devices, so the need for an expensive Harmony is really not present anymore. My 890 died a year ago and I don't see the need to replace it. I really only use the HTPC and occasionally Chromecast - which itself needs no remote.
I have been using a combination of the Gizmo app and a
Logitech TK820. I find the theater view remote mode of Gizmo to be a little sluggish, particularly for long distance scrolling, so the keyboard gets the most use when I'm on the couch. Gizmo is great for cuing up songs while moving about the house.
I wanted to shelve the keyboard and only pull it out for the occasional non-theater view use. After searching this forum and others, I came across
FLIRC. For those unaware, it is a small USB IR receiver. What makes this unique is the software. It allows you to assign any IR command from any remote you have, to any function you wish. This seemed like a good way to make use of the otherwise unused buttons on my Onkyo remote (RC-690). It has direction buttons, play/stop/pause, etc. It's an ok remote, and using it gives me full control over my receiver. My goal is for this to be the only remote I need. It has "learned" how to turn my tv on and off.
One of the remote modes to choose from is "Windows Media", with the button options below.
I can get the directional buttons, the enter button, and the backspace key (programmed from a different screen on the Flirc remote), but I am having trouble with a few others. The pause/play/stop/ffd/rwd/next/prev keys won't work for me.
If anyone else has been down this road, perhaps I am missing something. 2 possible explanations for what is happening:
1) The "Windows Media Controller" profile that FLIRC is using is not the same as whatever MC Remote profile JRiver uses. I noticed that when I pressed the play button in theater view, it jumped to movie in my list, as though I had pressed the first letter of the movie on a keyboard.
2) My Onkyo remote is the cuprit. I will hunt down my old TV remote next and see if I can get it to function with a pause/play button programmed through FLIRC.
Another thing I noticed: The TK820 keyboard has media shortcut keys - pause/play/next/etc. These always work fine. The FLIRC software also has an option to program a remote with compute Media Keys. I figured this would be another way to get to the pause/play/skip etc.
But this didn't work for me either, strengthening the idea that the remote is to blame. If anyone else has experience with FLIRC and JRiver, I'd love to hear your insights. What remote is working for you? What program mode did you use with FLIRC?