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Saturday September 11, 2010

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Universal remote controls

Posted by: By Risto Sampla, Deeptank | 2 February, 2009 - 10:42 AM
Logitech remote Our living rooms are often littered with remote controls of all manner of shapes and sizes. Many of us own a TV, Hi-Fi, DVD or Blu-Ray player, surround sound system, digital set top box, Foxtel, games console - the list goes on.

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The ironic thing here is that while the manufacturers’ intentions are to make our lives easier, the opposite is often a case. Each item in our home entertainment system pretty much always comes with a remote control, so after a while there is quite a collection of them kicking around and each one has to be learned.

Not only does the sheer number of these remotes make it painful to make sure you have them all to hand, but changing your set up from one use to another can also mean having to press several buttons on several remotes. You were last watching a DVD and now want to use your Hi-Fi to play a CD, or what about going from recording a show on your digital set top box recorder to turning on the radio. Help is at hand – and it’s simply called a ‘universal remote control’.

Buying one of these means that you can put every other remote control away in the bottom drawer of never-to-be-seen-again. These intelligent little devices will control just about any piece of home entertainment equipment from one device. This in itself is pretty handy, but all good remotes in this category come with ‘one-touch’ functionality, which means that you simply press a button according to the activity you require. Let’s assume you want to watch a DVD, so instead of fumbling around with your TV remote and DVD remote, a single press of a button of your universal remote control (‘Watch DVD’) will not only turn on your DVD player, but it will also turn on your TV – and set it to the right channel needed to receive an input from your DVD player. The ‘play’, ‘stop’, ‘fast forward’ etc. buttons will also now control your DVD player. The DVD is now finished and you want to play some music – simply hit the ‘Play CD’ button and your Hi-Fi will power up with just the CD player and amp turned on (the amp naturally switched to the right input from your CD player) and now the ‘play’, ‘stop’, ‘fast forward’ etc. buttons will control your CD player. Simple and elegant.

Setting up a good quality universal remote control is very easy. The range from Logitech, for example, comes with an Internet utility whereby you simply plug the universal remote control into your computer’s USB port and go to Logitech’s website. Currently their database of home electronics devices covers over 225,000 products from over 5,000 manufacturers. This means that unless you have some extremely obscure piece of kit, it’ll be on their list and they’ve done the programming for you. The searching for these devices is very easy – just choose the manufacturer from an alphabetical drop-down list and then the model in question. Simply follow this procedure for all your equipment and it’s a job done. These remotes also come with a ‘learn’ function, so if you do have that rare bit of kit not listed in their database you can ‘teach’ your universal remote control the required functionality one function at a time. Yes, a bit cumbersome perhaps, but it’s very unlikely you’ll even need to do this and if you do, it’ll only need to be done once.

So, not only does having one of these devices make your coffee table that much tidier, but it’ll also help make navigating between all those devices a breeze.  Just learning to use a handful of remotes is painful enough in its own right, so when you only need to learn one it’ll help you get more out of those dollars you spent on your living room entertainment. And speaking of dollars, these universal remotes can come in at under a $100,- which is a small price to pay for what they offer. Some of the higher end ones can cost several hundred, but may well not be necessary. A device at under a $100,- can control up to 15 devices, so there’s a lot of power to be had for a rather small outlay. It’s time to take full control of your home entertainment!

KEY POINTS:

-Just about every piece of home entertainment kit comes with its own remote control
-After a while you end up with a small collection of remotes controls scattered about your living room
-Learning to use them all is cumbersome, but a ‘universal remote control’ can replace them all
-Easy to set up by selecting your devices from a massive database
-Easy to use simply by selecting what you want to do – ‘Watch TV’, ‘Play a CD’, ‘Watch a DVD’ etc.
-Low cost, starting at less than $100

When asking Risto product specific questions please provide the brands and models of your equipment as this will allow him to respond with a more detailed reply.

Blog comments Your Say

  • i just bought a universal remote that doesnt have the open close feature for dvd players. im wondering if i can use my remote from my old dvd player which was a magnovox for my new dvd, cyberhome. the remote, although it was for a magnovox dvd player, doesnt have any manufacturer's name on it. it just says dvd video and made in china. could i program it, and if i can how do i do it. thanks in advance.

    Alex Tuesday 30 March, 2010 - 6:56 AM

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