By David Gibbons
Revised July 2010
I hope these comments can help you get the most out of a universal remote, particularly when you are setting it up for somebody else to use.
Some of the advertising for universal remotes would lead you to believe you can throw away all of your old remotes. Doing that is asking for trouble.
First of all, if the dog eats your universal remote after you program everything into it, and you have already discarded your old remotes, it's all over.
Second, (and most importantly) it is perhaps unwise to try to put every possible command for all of your equipment onto one remote. Let me list a couple of reasons why:
Therefore, to meet that need, the universal remote should be simple to use. Look at it this way: there are a few basic functions which are accessed all the time for each piece of home theater gear. Those commonly-used functions are the ones that should be programmed into the universal remote. This keeps the universal remote easy to understand for the people who just want to watch a movie, instead of hunting through a sea of remote buttons for the one that actually does what you want.
Once you have programmed the commonly used functions into the universal remote, then the other remotes can be stored in a safe, dry, dog-proof place. NOTE: Before you store them, REMOVE THE BATTERIES! It is very disappointing to try to use a remote, and find that it is no good because the batteries leaked. The stored remotes can be brought out and new batteries installed when fancy adjustments need to be made to any particular piece of equipment.
How do you decide what to program into the remote? What you want to do is survey the user[s] of the system to find out how they use it. (You might wind up talking to yourself, but anyone doing much remote programming is going to be doing that anyway.) What do they watch or listen to? What are the settings they use to watch or listen to that material? Write down the answers! If you get those questions answered, you are more than half-way towards setting up a really useful universal remote.
Universal remotes with touch screens or programmable LCD displays offer much more flexibility at the cost of being more confusing. The confusion can be reduced by doing two different things.
1 - Keep the SAME function or command in the SAME place on the programmable display section. If you have some command which shows up in every or most of the screen displays that you program, keep that command in the same location on the programmable screen each time. For example, change volume or channel.
2 - Constantly-accessed video and audio characteristics such as Dolby surround/stereo or screen aspect mode should (if possible) be presented to the operator even when the currently-selected screen is the one for controlling the the DVD player, VCR, or the cable or satellite box. This way the operator does not have to switch back to the audio or video display screens to change these commonly-accessed audio or video functions. The system components, configuration of the system, and user preferences will determine what video and audio functions are candidates for such treatment.
A macro is just a set of stored commands which the remote sends, one after another, whenever you activate that macro. A macro saves you from going through an entire 10 (or however many) step command sequence over and over again. Instead, the 10-step process gets automated by the use of the macro, so now one keypress can do the job of 10.
Here's an example of a macro you might program into your universal remote:
This macro would get the system ready to roll, all you then have to do is put in the DVD and hit Play on the remote.
Save your macros for the most commonly performed tasks, particularly those macros accessed by direct macro buttons on the remote. One way to develop such a macro is to carefully write down each button press or selection made during a manual set up of the system for doing a particular task. Then that sequence of steps can be set up as the macro in the universal remote. Save that write-up! When the dog eats the universal remote again, you can use your notes to re-program the replacement.
I believe that a task-based approach is a good one for developing macro commands to be programmed into a universal remote. "Task-based" here means "built around doing that task." For example, the user wants to watch a movie on DVD. The "watch DVD" macro in the example above might be built. In contrast, if the user wants to listen to a audio CD on the DVD player, then the receiver might be set for 2 channel stereo rather than Dolby Digital. The TV would not be turned on all if the user is just listening to an audio CD. A "listen to CD" macro would take that into account.
For people with simple systems, (TV and DVD) equally simple universal remotes can do a good job. However, for such simple systems the remotes that came with the television or the VCR may be smart enough to control the other piece of the system without the purchase of an additional remote. Some study of the remotes involved will show whether a universal remote is really necessary. Buying the same brand of equipment really increases your chances of having one of remotes do the whole job. Unfortunately, cable and satellite boxes don't come from the typical home electronic manufacturers. This can force you to go to a universal remote. More often, I see folks have the Cable or Satellite remote kept to handle the Cable or Satellite box, and one other universal remote to handle the rest of the system. The reason is that the remotes for the cable/satellite boxes have so many special functions that it requires a really fancy universal remote to do the job of covering the satellite remote's job. In simple systems, the Satellite /Cable remote ends up being the universal remote, which is OK too.
A vital point to remember is that the best universal remote in the world is junk if the final end user(s) will not use it!
I bought an expensive touch-screen model and spent lots of time programming it. However, after a few weeks I noticed that my ex-wife (despite the training I had given her ) was setting aside the universal remote and going back to the remote for the system receiver. She was not comfortable with the touch-screen remote, AND THAT MEANT IT WAS A FAILURE.
It is NOT the user's fault if they are not comfortable with a particular remote or its programming. The remote as programmed is just not right for them, and either it must be re-programmed, or another one must be selected and programmed.
Don't forget to "Punch Through"! Some remotes have this feature, and it is great when your system is using a receiver to handle the sound. This feature solves the annoying problem of constantly having to switch the universal remote back to the receiver to change the audio volume after using the universal remote to control the other pieces of equipment in the system.
Your universal remote may use some other term for this feature, but what it consists of is the ability to permanently link the universal remote's volume control to the receiver, even when the universal remote is set to control another piece of equipment.
For example, you could be controlling the DVD, and then immediately adjust the volume on the system via the universal remote's volume buttons without having to switch the universal remote over to talk to the receiver.
My final comment is about being willing to review your set up of your universal remote sometime after you initially set it up. Over time, you may find that some of your choices don't really work out that well, particularly for other people who have to use the universal remote. Take a look at how you and they are using the remote over time, and see if you can further refine the programming to make the remote simpler and easier to use.
For more in-depth information and reviews about universal remotes, check out the Web. Start with:
