Expensive remotes just to make life a little easier :O?
And massively family friendly..
The USP with the Harmony remotes is they are 'activities' based, this means you add all your 'devices' to a list, but you then setup activities such as 'Watch TV', 'Watch a DVD', 'Play a game', it asks simple questions whilst setting these up so although it can take 20mins-1 hour depending on complexity, it's not taxing.
The real beauty comes when you can give it to your Mum, and no matter how complex your setup is, all she has to do to Watch TV is to press that activity button, the remote turns on/off what it needs to, sets all the inputs etc on the various devices automatically.. which sounds like a 'macro', but once you are watching TV, if you then want to Watch a DVD, you just press that activity button, and the remote knows the TV is already on, so leaves it, switches the DVD player ON, switches the TV over to the correct input and even then turns off SKY for example (assuming this was used when watching TV).. If you use your AV Receiver for movies, it would turn that on to, and switch it to the correct input..
Once you've finished, you just press the power off button and it turns off anything it knows was on, and it all synchronises really well.
It even has a 'help' button, so if something didn't quite work correctly, it'll try and fix it, asking simple questions, like "Is the TV ON?", "Is the TV Set to Input 1", and it resends commands based on your yes/no answers..
This isn't just some expensive 'macro' capable highly configurable remote, it has some real convenience/accessibility features that are truly worth the money when you have anything but a basic setup and want your missus/kids/parents etc to be able to use it all without needing indepth knowledge of which HDMI/Scart input you need to set the TV to for the SKY Box, or what input the DVD player is on, or how to get sound out your AV Receiver etc.
They are very customisable too, so you can set exactly what each button does in each activity, and what features are on the display (scrollable), which can be a mix of devices commands etc, and you can even tailor power on order, and add in delays/extra remote commands on power up/down, it pretty much caters for the simple up to the massively complex.