I recently wrote a short review of the Harmony 1000 touch panel remote. Yesterday afternoon, that post received a suspicious comment entitled “Screw Harmony, the iconRemote Rocks!” from someone using the name illuminati and the e-mail address [email protected]. The problem is that the comment was posted by an employee of X10 Wireless Technology Inc and they did not divulge their affiliation. I’m not making baseless claims — I have proof and can share it if necessary. In my opinion, this is deceptive marketing and is in violation of the marketing code of ethics.
The comment told the story of how the person purchased a Logitech Harmony remote control for their mom and all of the problems they had programming it — and the problems their mom had using it. Their poor mom allegedly couldn’t press the buttons or read the text on the LCD screen. The Harmony Remote was supposedly too difficult to program or use. (In my opinion, the Logitech Harmony remotes are the easiest to program of any remote out there, given the level of functionality they produce.)
The comment went on to describe how they received a special e-mail from X10, allowing them and 100 other lucky customers to pre-order this new, soon-to-be-released remote. The commenter said they received one and it was supposedly far superior to the Logitech Harmony remotes. And their mom loved it too. Aww, how nice.
I did check out the pre-launch page for this new remote (of course, the link was included in the comment.) It includes even more “customer” testimonials from respected reviewers such as Dave G., Jay D., and Bill Z. I’d bet these people don’t even exist. Unless X10 can offer proof that these guys are real, non-affiliated customers, I’m going to assume that they are also falsified.
The commenter implied that the Harmony Remotes lose their memory when the batteries are replaced – this is false. Based on the content of their web page, the new X10 remote does lose its memory when the batteries are replaced – but don’t worry, it’s not a problem because “Mom” said it was really easy to reprogram the remote. The Harmony remotes use Smart State technology to automatically set each device to the proper power state and input state. If a component somehow gets to be in the wrong state, there is a help button on the Harmony Remote that will walk the user through fixing the problem. The X10 remote has no such features, plus the macros have to be manually programmed. These limitations were never mentioned.
Because of the lacking feature set and the deceptive and unethical practices of X10 Wireless Technology Inc, I maintain my recommendation of the Logitech Harmony Remotes — over the X10 universal remotes and pretty much any other.
Upon further investigation, I found that the X10 remote is actually a re-branded Philips SRU8010 remote control. So X10 Wireless Technologies Inc might be nothing more than a marketing machine.
I have an older Harmony 676 and absolutely love it. It’s a fantastic remote and controls everything I have. (And I don’t work for Logitech or any other remote maker).
I have a great deal of experience with the background of X10, as I have met the owner, Chung Hin Chew. My wife and I wrote a book, Escape from Paradise, much of which is about Mr. Chung. Our book derailed X10’s going public on NASDAQ, their ticker symbol would have been XTEN. X10 had not revealed to the SEC that Mr. Chung was the man behind the operation.
On October 24, 1984, Mr. Chung had been detained in Brunei by the Brunei police for nearly one year until October 3, 1985. Mr. Chung’s father went into hiding for several years. The father had amassed a fortune, and was an associate of Daniel Arnold, a former CIA agent, who had been involved in the MIA cover-up.
On November 15, 1988, X10 went into receivership (bankruptcy). The next year, Mr. Chung acquired X10, and moved the company to Hong Kong, where he now lives. X10 is, or was, owned by a Bermuda company. There is more to X10 than meets the idea, as was published in Escape from Paradise.
I’m just curious; how did you know he worked for x10? Is it something obvious, or do you have some savvy tricks up your sleeve?
I knew Chung in Singapore.