Harmony remotes are smart remotes.

From day one you have a USB port on the top of every Harmony remote and using that you can just connect it to your computer and do all sorts of things.

[shot on facecam]: talk about the thomson problem, no script, just improvise on camera, just these points:

• vcr problem, scalpers
• flipper as potential solution

In order for me to give orders to my son, my thom son, using my Flipper Zero, someone that has my same VCR and the remote would have to scan every button and then upload that data to one of the many free online databases compatible with the Flipper. As you probably can guess, that never happened.

You can't find the infrared codes to control this VCR online. Except if you have a Harmony remote, because in that case, it is just a speedrun, baby. You just literally search for your TV model or VCR model and download from Logitech's database of 225,000 remotes.

This happens because if you somehow have a device that is not already in the Harmony database, you can make your Logitech remote learn, just like with other universal remotes.

But when you do that, your configuration, this new device, gets automatically added to the database. You don't have to put any effort into it. This is why since 2001 these remotes need the internet and also why the database is so huge. Because it is a collection of every single remote, every single Harmony user ever cloned since 2001.

This huge amount of data was probably a reason alone to acquire the company for Logitech. But this is not even the selling point of these remotes. It's not even the main feature because we're talking about a Logitech product from the pre-iPhone era.

You know when tech used to be cool and you could just customize anything in software?

The 885 was the first Harmony remote with a color screen.