Controlling TiVo HD With A Harmony 880

Warning: this post is as much for me as it is for you! I’ve spent a chunk of time setting up my Logitech Harmony 880 remote and wanted to note the settings in the strange event that I lost my account…

Nothing else to see here, move along.

Device level changes:

    Adjust power settings

  • I want to turn off this device when it’s not in use
  • A button on the remote for On, and a different button for Off
  • Power On – I don’t have the original remote, but I know the command that is used: LiveTv(Live TV)
  • Power Off – I don’t have the original remote, but I know the commands that are used: TiVo, ChannelDown, Select, ChannelDown, Select
    Adjust the delays (speed settings)

  • Power On Delay: 1500 ms (default)
  • Inter-key Delay: 100 ms
  • Inter-Device Delay: 500 ms (default)

Activity level changes – Watch TV

    Custom Buttons – Standard Buttons

  • Down Arrow – ChannelDown
  • Up Arrow – ChannelUp
  • Prev – Enter
  • Menu – TiVo
  • Exit – Clear
  • Stop – LiveTv(Live TV)
  • Skip Back – Replay
  • Skip Forward – Advance
  • Plus – Clear
  • E – Enter
    Custom Buttons – Additional Buttons

  • TiVo – TiVo
  • Live TV – LiveTv(Live TV)
  • Thumbs Down – ThumbsDown
  • Thumbs Up – ThumbsUp
  • Aspect – Aspect

Notes: the Power On/Off stuff I’m still not sure of. To get a TiVo to go into Standby you have to go through the menu-ing system and even then, it simply turns off the output ports on the back; the device stays on otherwise, for recording purposes… I don’t know if I’m going to bother to keep that in there. The Inter-key Delay change is mostly for moving around the menus/guide – the original remote lets you cruise around the letters used for searching pretty well. I found that the 880 was a way sluggish at the default of 500ms – at 100ms it’s fairly responsive and I haven’t seen any side effects. Since the TiVo HD has two tuners, you can flip between tuners using the Live TV button – that’s why it’s in so many places. Other things I remapped just because of button placement, like Clear – since the Plus/Clear key is sorta hard on the thumbs, I moved it up to Exit which was unused by the default layout. Setting Prev to be Enter was for the same reasons (and Enter is the Prev key on the original TiVo remote.) Aspect got a “soft” key because I don’t plan to use it much and it’s out of the way, up there.

And don’t forget that Skip Foward becomes “Skip ahead 30 seconds” if you change the settings on yer TiVo HD box, per the comments here.

Like I said: this is mostly for me, but you never know when other people have the same hardware and same challenges, so if it helps you out as well, enjoy!


2 thoughts on “Controlling TiVo HD With A Harmony 880”

  1. Just FYI, if you select an older tivo model (I have a HD and a TCD540040) then harmony will “know” a “PowerToggle” and “PowerOn” and “PowerOff” command. In my experience, only the PowerToggle works.

    For what ever reason, this doesn’t show up if you select the Tivo HD model.

    So, my suggestion (what I’m doing) is telling harmony I have a TCD540040, and telling it to use PowerToggle to turn the machine off, and Tivo to turn it on. It works perfectly fine. (Using Tivo to turn it on rather than LiveTV will help you avoid possibly seeing the score on a football game the tivo is recording on LiveTV when you turn it on).

    The only other hiccup is that the ‘Window’ command on the TCD540040 will do ‘Aspect’ on the Tivo HD. The command labeled ‘Aspect’ didn’t seem to do anything for me.

  2. I have a Tivo HD and a Harmony One…

    ‘Exit’ is by default mapped to the Clear button. If you are in the DVR list and hit Exit, it will delete the selected program without asking for confirmation.

    So I remapped the exit button on my Harmony One to ‘Live TV’. Then I made a custom button called Delete Now and mapped that to ‘Clear’.


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