Tivo Series 3 and Tivo Series 2 with Harmony 880

Have you tried the learn ir setting where you place the main tivo remote and the 880 2 in apart?

 

I have the same exact setup (S3 + S2). After a few days of trying out the Harmony 880 I decided it was not an improvement over my existing multiple remotes (HDTV, A/V Receiver and TiVo) and returned it to Amazon. In fact I find that the TiVo remote was mostly adequate. The thing that I didn't like about the Harmony was that it does not support macros, i.e. key commands in a sequence. Anybody know a good universal remote that supports macros? The key sequence that I would dearly want a dedicated button for is to turn on/off close captioning.

 

the harmony can learn and sequence of commands you just have to program them as an activity.

 

Due to lack of T2G & MRV on the S3, I have purchased the cables and another TiVo wireless adapter so that I can cable it up again to the main TV. However, when I went to program my Harmony 880 I ran into a problem with a second TiVo in the same room. Has anyone successfully programmed the Harmony to independently control two TiVos?

 

First set unique addresses for each Tivo and all your Tivo remotes. Set up your activities for each Tivo, then contact Harmony support and tell them which activity is associated with each address. They will update your activities with the address you tell them. I have a DTivo and an S3, DTivo is set to address 1 and S3 to address 2. Activities are Watch DTivo and Watch HDTivo. I told Harmony support that activity Watch DTivo is at address 1 and Watch HDTivo is at address 2. A day later they e-mailed back that they did the update and all is okay.

 

Yes, but I had to have help from Level 2 support.

I just made sure I had each Tivo set to a different remote address other than 0 using the original Tivo remote and told support what remote address I had used for each box.

They made changes to my account and after downloading the changes to my 880 everything worked.

 

Success!! I was able to get everything working adding a second TiVo to the 880 remote - no call to support needed. First I programed both TiVo remote codes using the original remote. I added the second Tivo as a Device to the Harmony setup page, it called it PVR 2 then when back to Devices> Confirm Infrared Commands: [skip] the power button check, then used the TiVo remote with the DVR selector set to [2] entered direction up then select buttons as requested. Then the Harmony page responded with "A better set of remote commands were found". Updated the remote and that's it - It works.

 

That a lot faster than having to get tier 2 support invloved, thans for the tip.

 

just curious--why would you have an S2 and an S3 on the same system? or, to put it another way, what's the advantage of keeping the S2?

 

TiVO To Go for one.

 

I have my S3 and S1 hooked up to the same TV. I record mostly programs for the kids on the S1, and they like to watch on the big TV. Their programs aren't HD anyway so I can fill up my mod'd S1 (221 hours) with all kinds of junk without taking up space from my HD content on the S3.

I use my Home Theater Master MX-500 remote to control both (and it supports macros as well!).

 

I found the Harmony's response time too slow when compared to the Tivo remote when going through menus. I tried it when it first came out. Has that improved?

 

I haven't noticed a difference. You can also change some of the advanced settings in the harmony setup to make it snappier (sorry, I don't remember them, there was a thread around here about them).

 

You have to configure the repeat settings. By default the Harmony repeats any code it sends 3 times. If you set it to not repeat, it's as fast as the original remote.

 

I previously ordered the Harmony but returned it because it didn't support macros. Thanks to this post I just ordered the Home Theater Master MX-500 from Amazon.com. We'll see.

 

I have an 880 and my S3's video does not always come out of sleep mode when I press "watch PVR." This problem generally occurs when I turn my TV and Receiver off with a timer, and was never a problem when I used the S3's original remote.

To remedy the situation, sometimes I only have to press the "Tivo" button . . . this seems to wake the S3 up. Other times I have to turn everything off before hitting "watch PVR" again . . . Sometimes I have to turn everythin off multiple times, which is extremely annoying.

Any ideas how to fix this?

 

Why is your S3 going into "sleep mode"? (I assume this means standby?)

If that's the case, it's easy, just go into the Harmony setup and tell it to leave the S3 on.

If you are leaving it on, there's no such thing as standby, and I would guess that you're hooked up via HDMI and it's some sort of handshaking issue with HDCP. What kind of TV is it?