Review: Harmony Adapter for PS3

I own, and love, my Logitech Harmony remote control. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Harmony remotes, here’s a little explanation. Harmony remotes connect to your computer through a USB cable, and then your computer connects to a Harmony web application. In that application you tell it what devices you have (TV, Receiver, Blu-Ray player, Game system etc.) and then it downloads all of the codes for that device into your remote. You also set up Activities (Such as Watch TV, Play XBox) that control all of your systems functions. For example, when I press Watch TV, it turns on the TV, sets it to the TV input, turns on my Receiver, Turns it to the TV input and then makes sure the cable box is on.

So as you can see, the Harmony remotes rock pretty hard. You can take a non programmer and have a completely customized remote control within 15 minutes. Now the thing here is, the remote does Infrared (IR) remote codes. That’s great for 90% of the things you want to run. But the Playstation 3 kinda screwed that up.

When the PS3 came out, Sony decided to forgo IR remote commands and instead make everything Bluetooth. What that meant for me was, I had a remote that controlled everything in my system except for my PS3. As I use my PS3 almost exclusively for Blu-Ray and DVD movies, that meant that every time I wanted to control a movie, I needed to use a game controller, or buy a bluetooth remote from Sony. This was annoying to say the least, but Logitech has finally come up with a good solution.

Logitech has released the Harmony Adapter for PS3. It’s a small device that you plug into a power outlet, and then sit within view of your IR remote. All it does is accept IR commands for the PS3 and convert them into Bluetooth to control the PS3. You pair the adapter with the bluetooth on the PS3, and then you add the PS3 to your Harmony remote and are good to go. I used it all weekend long, and it worked flawlessly. Now I no longer have to switch remotes when doing PS3 stuff. And that’s damn well worth the $60 in my opinion. If you have a Harmony and a PS3, this couldn’t come more highly recommended!