Going from 5 to 7 or more base channels isn't as dramitacally noticeable as adding ceiling speakers, that's very noticeable with Dolby Atmos content. The whole experience with newer content consists of the sound stage completely enveloping you.
The deal with multiple subs being that it can make placement less critical and tuning a little easier.
Now having said that if your library consists of 5.1 content any audio up mixes don't fill in the gaps very well, even with high end equipment.
The difference between 7 and 9 base is left to the masterering, with much of it being done with 7 channels and the up mix possibly filling in the wides somewhat.
Nothing I found can compete with the old Philips Pronto. I've been buying them on Ebay (usually sub $50) over years. The keypad usually is the point of failure can be easily disassembled and cleaned.
I also dropped $700 on one of these plus I think $300 on the IR blaster/hub. I spent A LOT of time designing my screens (scrolling activity/device/home control screens). Not sure if you had issues with the flaky battery cover switch - eventually (and very nervously) removed that switch and soldered across the contacts. But like you, I realized this was at EOL… and the zwave was flaky - if you tried to add a huge number of devices.
I am currently using 6 or 7 harmonies but had my eye on sofabaton as a potential future replacement.
Alas, I would need Hubitat control over devices/activities as well as status (power on-off). Controlling Hubitat devices from the remote, although nice to have, is not as critical for me.
The only gripe I have about the x1s so far is the seemingly inability to assign button commands as defaults, it seems that none are assigned unless an activity or device is selected, not a deal breaker as so far this thing is working very well in my setup, just an FYI.
Isn’t the harmony the same in this sense? I don’t believe the buttons can be programmed in power off mode.
I ended up adding a Power Off activity on our harmonies that only includes an emulated Roku device (through HA) to allow me to use the (4) colored buttons to control lights/blinds. Whenever Hubitat sees the harmony power off, it automatically runs my “Power Off” activity.
I imagine this is doable by dinking with the power settings of the device that you create for the Hubitat integration and adding on/off commands.
I get power status from my AVP into Hubitat using Hubitats Denon driver...
Aside from getting status from the remote, the AV receiver is prob the best way to handle this. When we are watching something in the theater (current activity is not Power Off), we flash the room lights to notify when someone pulls into our driveway.
Edit: Or I suppose I could just plug the projector or receiver into a power monitoring plug module and determine power status that way.
That's what I do on all my TVs. I use ESPHome based ones that come into home assistant, as I didn't want to worry about update rates, etc, on zigbee/zwave. I can pound away on my wifi with no issues.
Huh, another pro only option, another rabbit hole, and not enough detail about what's supported and over what transports, nice looking remotes though, and someone finally ditched the worthless channel up/down buttons...
And its $1300 without the bridge, and no bluetooth, so i imagine you're left with similar android tv variant navigation challenges that I faced with RTI...
Only in the sense you buy from a dealer. For sure it's a different tier.
I'd just say that this remote challenge is why I use Control4. I obviously also use hubitat. Plus i use Josh.ai. The control4 support for their remotes is very good. Lots of c4 users prefer the Sr remotes. Not trying to sell anyone on anything. Just stating I made some practical choices to get the result I desired. I wish it was different, but I don't want to spend hours a week getting little conveniences to work when it's not my day job. Put another way, I threw money at it. Pretty happy with the result.
Too bad you have to purchase through a 3rd party "professional installer"....
Probably means the end user can't maintain it either without being registered as an installer as they probably keep the programming software on lockdown like Savant and Control4 do.
Price point and dealer networks provide support. It's not positioned as a consumer product.
It's the remote for Josh.ai. But if you buy it as an AVA remote you can run any Android app on it. So if you want to control your TV and get video doorbell on it those work.
