NEW: Improved Apple TV support for HDMI-CEC and Bluetooth remotes

Channels Apple TV
#174

OMG - thank you for explaining this, I was so very confused what was happening!

I have two AppleTV's sharing the same (new, excellent) Channel Categories, one category of which I use to acts as “favorites.” On AppleTV #1, my Harmony 650's channel buttons allow me to channel surf because the Sony TV there has robust CEC support. On AppleTV #2 my new Harmony Companion was programmed to use this Windows PC as a virtual device, and it's working pretty well, all things considered. These commands are set up as PageUp and PageDown as instructed here. But when channel surfing live channels, the order wasn't the same, and I thought it had something to do with how I'd set up and organized my favorites. I was looking around trying to figure out how to reorganize them. I checked under Settings > Manage Sources > Lineup Order, but changes there didn't have any impact, and I'm confused now by what "Default" means in this context. Then I played around inside Settings > General > LiveTV > Channel Surfing but whatever selections I tried, the actual navigation behavior still wasn't matching. I was stumped and thinking about how to best ask the question here.

But that's what's exactly what's happening, Channel Up and Channel Down is skipping two channels with every button press instead of just one. That's exactly the pattern I am seeing. I can stop digging for some other explanation. Hopefully this can be fixed somehow? And thanks for helping preserve my sanity! :slight_smile:

#175

I can't even get CH > CH < to skip ahead two channels anymore. F1-F4 work fine, but can't figure out why page > page < does not.

#176

I used the skip forward and skip back for the CH up & CH down.

#177

For what it's worth when I was setting up the buttons on a Harmony Companion, I would find it would just ... stop working. For no discernible reason. It's like the Harmony Hub got locked up or something? Some AppleTV commands would work but these wouldn't. Usually a reboot of the Hub would fix it. Just now though, even that didn't fix the issue and I was about to throw in the towel. Then I rebooted the AppleTV. And this time, those buttons worked again. I don't know how long they will keep working, though. Worth a shot?

On my bedroom TV, which just uses IR and CEC, I had to reboot the TV itself to get these commands working again. Often feels a bit like voodoo. I wish it worked more consistently.

I could have sworn I tried that previously and it didn't work. I just tried again though and this time it's working, changing one channel at a time. Perfect! Thanks.

#178

Skip forward/backward is working for me again. I don't watch a lot of live tv, and don't really channel surf, but it's nice to have when you want it.

Does anyone know if there any shortcuts to navigating the guide? I'd like something that would skip forward a day or so, so I could quickly browse days or a week out, instead of scrolling.

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#179

The One for All Streamer remote that I have has 4 keys that come labeled with channels like Netflix and such, but they can be used to record macros. You could easily just record 4 right arrows for one and 4 left arrows for another. I may actually do this now that you mentioned it because I was struggling to think of something to use them for.

#180

I'm starting to feel stupid here. I've read through this whole thread, but still can't get this working. I have a Harmony Ultimate Home remote with Hub. I have had an activity set up and working for a couple months where I can control the app with the Harmony, except for no channel number input. I also have to back out of things and get to the left nav bar to get to recordings, etc, but being able to hit a button to get to that is a nice to have for me. I really just want to be able to enter channel numbers. Between my OTA antenna, cable and TV Everywhere, it's too much scrolling around to get to channels.

I've been using the Harmony app on my iPhone to set everything up, but nothing. As I said, I do have the remote controlling the ATV4K so it definitely connects. The difference I see vs the documentation here is my bluetooth pair to the remote says "Harmony Keyboard", not "Harmony Remote", and when I go to pairing and let it sit, I never get a harmony remote. I've even deleted the harmony keyboard and rebooted the ATV and the only thing it finds is harmony keyboard.

Next, I create a Windows Computer device. Problem is I get the "Needs to be paired" message that others have mentioned, but there is nothing to pair. I go to the bluetooth screen and nothing comes up since there is no computer to pair. How do I pair? I think I did get the pairing to happen once, I have no idea how, but once I built an activity and customized the keys from the Windows Computer profile, none of the keys worked, and neither did the number input on the remote screen.

I've done a bit of googling and can't find any step by step directions. Are there any anywhere? I'm getting really frustrated with this. Although I've never dug that deep into customizing my Harmony remote, I've been able to set it up for multiple devices in the past, DirecTV boxes, TiVo boxes, Blu-Ray Players, PS4, setting up audio only activities, etc, but I can't get this one.

#181

“Needs to be paired” means pairing the hub to the atv. It has to be done in the harmony app and in the right order It’s confusing to get keyboard functions setup on the hub. Below is a link that kind of explains the process. Just substitute atv for the shield and I use windows computer instead of kodi. On a side note you may be setting it up correctly but you need to customize remote buttons 0-9 to use the right device. I don’t have a atv I use a shield but the process of adding windows computer or apple to the hub is the same regardless. You should also be able to set the dvr button to f1in hub and then in channel settings set f1to library. F2 to guide on remote in hub and f2 to guide in channels settings.

#182

I finally did get an activity set up and working with this, but no idea what I did different to make it work. As far as I can tell, I did the same thing I've done a dozen times already, and it just finally worked. Now I'm trying to do the exact same set up, just leaving my AVR off, because when I'm just watching TV, I use the built in TV speakers for audio, not my surround system. As far as I can tell, I'm doing the exact same thing I did to get it all working as I did with the AVR, but no joy. Back to beating my head against the wall some more.

#183

Is your new activity for tv sound asking you to pair? If it is you need to turn on Bluetooth pairing on the atv. Basically you are tricking the hub into thinking your atv/shield is a computer that has Bluetooth. The hub doesn’t care or know anything about the device, it just says hey I need to send letter “p” to Bluetooth address xxxxxxxxx. Sync is between remote and hub, pair is between hub and device(atv/shield/ccgtv,) and repair remote is pair between remote and hub. You may need to unpair your atv first then create both avr and tv sound activity’s and then pair with atv. Don’t forget you may need to use customize buttons in settings and set buttons to use different devices. For instance 0-9 would use atv devices or computer, guide would use f1 computer device, direction arrows, back, home use atv, etc. mix and match with what works for you. Do this again for each activity

#184

I picked up a cheap used Apple TV 4K, 1st gen, on ebay for $35. I should have it in a few days. It doesn't have a remote. I have a Harmony Hub with the Companion remote.

Question is, am I going to have any issues setting it up without the original remote? Apple TV uses both IR and Bluetooth. Since I can't get into the settings to pair the hub over Bluetooth, my plan is to set it up as an IR device first, then add it as a BT device once I get into the settings of the Apple TV.

#185

Or just use an ios device. As long as it's on the same network you can use it as a remote for tvos

#186

I don't have another Apple device. I added an Activity in the Harmony Hub using Apple TV as the device and A1842 as the model number. Set up all the buttons. One button is called pair, so I mapped that too. It is all setup as an IR device. Seems like it should work.

#187

I'm back to stage one here. Not only did I manage to get everything working, but I picked up a couple more Harmony Ultimates with hubs for other TV setups. I had finally figured out how to set up the remotes consistently where they worked fine with all the hardware on for each TV setup AppleTV 4K, and had the channel numbers working. I even wrote up notes on how to do this in case I every had to do it again. Then tvOS17 came out a couple weeks ago and I started having some minor issues, and even before the OS update, I had started having some problems with the AppleTVs turning off. I didn't mind that problem much since I had them set up to power down after being idle for a certain amount of time anyway.

So I decided to rebuild my activities. Can't get it to work, and I can't find my notes. Can anyone put up simple step by step instructions? The main problem I'm having is, again, getting channel input to work. If I start with the "Watch TV" activity, I get the channel number screen, the harmony keyboard is paired, but pressing channel numbers isn't doing anything. The number pad does have a '.-' key, which I didn't have before, so I'm assuming the remote is using the number pad for my LG TV, not the PC. Starting from any other activity, I never get a number pad screen at all.

Any help out there please?

#188

Yeah I’ve had the same problem before, I think there was a work around but I can’t exactly remember.

Something rings a bell to me about making an activity with just the keyboard/mac/pc (I think there may be an option/recommendation?) - that way the touch screen defaults to that input, and then you can add other devices after. I think that is how I got it to work in the past.

And yeah if the touch screen isn’t on the number pad by default I think there is settings inside the remote to change that, but unfortunately no setting anywhere on changing the device.

#189

Thank you for the reply! I tried again yesterday starting with just the TV and PC, and this time I did get the right looking number pad, but it didn't work in Channels.

I also had to set up this activity with the application on my desktop because you can't add devices to an activity once the activity is created using the app on the iPhone. That's also part of what is bothering me because when I figured out how to get all this working before, I did the whole setup in the iPhone app, not on my desktop.

#190

Oh okay, I’m not sure why that’s not working for you then.

What if you try just the pc/mac/keyboard and no tv?

Are other keyboard buttons working? Do you use the keyboard for navigation or another device?

#191

Just add windows computer to your devices and then when you build the activity include that device. Then after you set everything else up, edit the remote for the activity. Then map each number key to the windows key :slight_smile:

#192

I don’t think you’re able to with the touchscreen model?
I’m sure I couldn’t find it anyway! Haha

#193

Oh sorry i thought you were using the companion remote and the hub

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