Please help with Remote purchase (1 Viewer)

[Bill Fletcher]

Can anyone give me a recommendation on a remote? I have standard gear (Sony TV, Denon receiver, satellite dish, etc). These are the things I would like to be able to do:
1. Control multiple functions with a single button on the remote
2. Control X-10 type devices in the future.
3. Hide all my components behind a cabinet door, so I wouldn't have line of site to them from the remote.
Thanks for the help. Bill

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Bill,
If you can live with no hard buttons I would recommend the
Crisp Solutions UC515 which is a full LCD Touch Screen IR
remote with green back lighting. It controls 8 devices and
it's a learning remote and it does X-10 and I love mine.
I have the same remote only sold under a diffrent name which
is the Sima SUR-20 and it's great.. But it had no hard buttons
at all. If you have to have hard buttons then it's not the
remote for you, but Crisp Solutions may have something else
that fits your bill (pardon the pun) check out: http://www.crispsolutions.com
As far as closing the cabinent doors, the only way you will
be able to do this is if you buy IR senders from Niles or
some other company. Basicly you would have an IR Receiver
on top of the cabinent which is physicly linked to enough
IR Transmitters to cover all the equipment you have.
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Brett DiMichele
Certified Audio Nut
My Home Theater Site!
[email protected]

 

[Bill Fletcher]

Thanks Brett. That's exactly the kind of info I need to get started. I will check out Crisp Solutions.
When you refer to "hard buttons", does that mean a button that controls multiple functions with one touch?
Thanks. Bill

 

[RoyGBiv]

Brett is talking about push buttons you physically push when he says "hard buttons." This is opposed to remotes that only have a LCD touch screen where there are pictures of buttons in various shapes and sizes and you touch these pictures to perform that function on the remote. A button that controls more than one function with one touch is called a "macro" not a hard button.
Whatever you do, you will either need a UHF remote with receivers inside the cabinet, or an RF extender retransmitter with other receivers inside the cabinet. For either there are numerous choices. Before buying anything, go to www.remotecentral.com where there is more information about every type of remote than you can possibly imagine. There are reviews and also forums, like this one, where you can post your questions before you buy.
SMK

 

[Bill Fletcher]

Thanks Steven. I'll take a look.
Bill

 

[Dustin B]

The Home Theater Master MX-500 is winning great praise. Probably the best hard button remote out there. Then the other common recommendation is the Pronto TSU2000 (little expensive and hard to program, but can do just about anything).
Research them out, and as mentioned above use remotecentral as a resource to do so.
Another option if you just want something cheap and functional is the One For All Cinema 6 or 7 learning remotes (the 6800 and 7800 not the 6200 and 7200). Can be had for around $20 and with the use of the internet can be made to do a remarkable amount (ie it's the only remote I use to control Onkyo receiver, Panasonic DVD, DSS, RCA VCR, and Sony TV).
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Dustin
[email protected]
My Adire Tempest Sonosub

 

[george kaplan]

I will second the pronto/rc5000 recommendation.
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13-time NBA world champion Lakers: 1949, 1950, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1972, 1980, 1982, 1985, 1987, 1988, 2000, 2001

 

[Pete Jennings]

I second the Home Theater Master MX-500 recommendation. I've had one for a month now, and think it's great!
Pete

 

[Mike_Reznik]

I have a pronto and love it. I didn't have a hard time programming it at all. You can download just about anything you would need from remotescentral, including codes for all of the devices so that you don't need to sit there and program them in.
As for wanting to use this with a closed cabinet, you will need to get an IR repeater like mentioned above. A great place to look is http://www.smarthome.com This is a great page for home automation and x10 stuff. You should check it out.
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