Origa.me

As my planned Myth/Boxee/whatever all-encompassing media centre PC is some way off, I wanted to set my existing systems up to at least work intuitively from a single remote and provide seamless switching between devices.  The devices I currently have are:

• Hannspree Xv-S 32" TV
• Sumvision Lynx DVD Player
• Thomson satellite (freesat) receiver
• Pinnacle Show Centre (with remote movie server)
• Sony VCR

Easy enough ... just get a universal remote!  Well, that's just what I did.  After some tweaking, my new Logitech Harmony 555 remote does an admirable job of controlling everything.   In fact, I'd recommend one of these device to anyone who is looking for a similar setup.

The only problem I encountered was with switching between inputs.  With so many devices I was using SCART, Video (phono), and Component inputs.  The TV doesn't auto-sense on anything except the SCART sockets and it doesn't support direct switching to inputs so the remote has to do its best to guess how many times it should send the 'move right' command in order to select the correct one.  Sadly, this is a bit 'hit and miss' although not the fault of the remote.  I really needed to have everything using the TV's 2 auto-sensing SCART inputs.  Obviously, with 4 devices, I was going to need some kind of intelligent input switcher.

I chose a Belkin 3-to-1 intelligent SCART switch (intending to use the pass-through feature on either the VCR or the satellite receiver to handle the remaining connection).  I had a few problems with it at first but after some swapping of cables the whole lot now works as intended.  The problem was that some devices (namely the satellite receiver and Show Centre) wouldn't output correctly through the switch - possibly something to do with the switch not supporting RGB devices.  Anyway, because my video has a SCART pass-through which actually seems to change the signal to a compatible format, I was able to make the following connections:

• Show Centre to VCR
• VCR to switch (input 3 - lowest priority)
• DVD to switch (input 2)
• Switch to TV (SCART 1)
• Satellite receiver to TV (SCART 2 - default input)

This leaves me with a single remaining SCART socket on the switch (input 1 - highest priority).  This is ideal for the games console (which lives in a cupboard when it's not being used) as the switch is far more accessible than the back of the TV for connecting cables.

The Logitech remote is configured to control the power states of all devices except the Show Centre which is on all the time as startup and shutdown delays were causing the SCART sockets to select the wrong inputs.  By connecting the Show Centre/VCR to the switch's lowest priority input, it's overridden whenever another device is on and the VCR overrides the Show Centre (on pass-through) by default when it's not in standby.

Hopefully, this information will prove useful to anyone else in a similar situation.  Note: I'm not using the VCR to record from any of the sources (something which may have complicated matters somewhat) - that will wait for the planned all-in-one über device!