Your Hopper remote can probably do what that RCA remote can do, as it is fully capable of controlling the devices you mentioned. But, if you want to be able to push one button to turn everything on for a specific activity, such as watch TV, watch a blu-ray, or watch TV with audio system, a Harmony would be the way to go.
Really? I kind of consider myself an expert on JP1 remotes like the RCA and can tell you that it is far more capable than any Dish or Harmony remote. They do macros (activities), 5 functions per button, nested macros (unlimited macro steps), device specific macros, device multiplexing (meaning unlimited devices), multi-macros, device specific volume punch thru, conditional branching, key group mapping, custom protocols and devices, signal analysis, pronto hex import/export, etc. Harmony is pretty limited if you need to do anything besides basic activities. Most harmony's have no sequence capability whatsoever, and a few can do only 5 steps. Only the newest Ultimate/Touch can do 10 steps. Even something as simple as programming a button to toggle captions on a harmony can be a challenge, whereas, it's trivial on the RCA, and impossible on a Dish remote. On harmony, you can't even edit the steps in activity macros, only add more commands to them in a few cases (using the old 7.7 software).
Last time I checked, I could do "activities" just fine on my RCA and have been doing so since before harmony even existed. Plus they're faster, and I have full control over the steps. So I don't understand how you can equate any JP1 with a Dish remote.
