by Clay Hankins
The lights are low, the volume is turned up and you’re right at the end of one of the most exciting games or season finales you’ve seen. Your adrenaline is flowing and you want to turn up the volume just a tad more so you pick up one of thirteen remotes on the coffee table, press a button, and …… the picture is gone! You fervishly start pressing buttons and now the sound and picture are gone. You throw the remote down, storm out of the room to another TV to see the end and, oh, no, it’s over and you missed it.
On the other side of Dallas, I’m reading up on the latest technology or designing home theater layout and my phone rings. The following conversation ensues.
“Hello, how may I help you?”
“Hi, I was watching the super bowl, I picked up my remote and pressed a wrong button and now I have no picture and sound. I don’t know what I’ve done.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll be right over to straighten out the system, and might I suggest a good universal remote that will allow you to use just one remote and keep this from happening again?
“Oh, that would be awesome. Thanks!”
You’d be surprised at how often that happens. I generally don’t consider myself a salesman, but one product I do try to “sell” is a good universal remote. Programmed correctly, a good remote can save the end user and us a ton of future headaches like the one above.
There are several types of universal remotes out there and I’ll touch briefly on a few, and elaborate more on others.
First, lots of equipment manufacturers are including universal remotes with their equipment. For example, DirecTV, Dishnet, and the cable companies all include a universal remote with the box. These usually have about four buttons on top (Cable, TV, DVD, Aux – or something similar) and can be programmed to operate a pretty basic system.
These remotes have stored databases for multiple manufacturers and can be used to control the basic functions of a TV, cablebox, and maybe a DVD player. You select the device you want to program, follow the instructions to get the remote into programming mode and punch in the code for that brand and voila, you’re done.
Again, for very basic systems, they work pretty well.
The next group of remotes are called learning remotes. These remotes allow you to “teach” commands to the universal remote from the original remote that may not be in its database.
A lot of higher end a/v receivers come with this kind of remote. These are also generally pretty good for basic systems and some can even be programmed to run “macro” commands. A macro command is executed when a series of commands are programmed into one button.
For example, you press the “system on” and the remote then sends out the commands that turn on the TV, turn on the receiver, turn on the cable box and set the inputs to the appropriate settings. Again, the universal remotes that come with some equipment can be pretty good, but can still be limited in that you may have to still do a lot manually to get the system to respond the way you want it to.
Finally, the last group of remotes is the learning remotes that are completely customizable and have some sort of LCD screen for custom buttons.
These are clearly my favorite and yes, more expensive. However, it will be the best money you spend on your home theater. This type of remote allows us to program it in such a way that the use of the remote is truly one button operation. For example, you pick up the remote, press “watch TV” on the LCD screen and that’s it; projector comes on, electric hidden screen drops, receiver on, cablebox on, inputs set, lights dim. Enjoy. “Watch DVD”, same thing. What this type of remote allows us to do that I like the best is to put buttons on the screen that don’t exist on the universal remote.
Look your cable or satellite remote and see if you have any buttons that cover surround setting for your receiver. They won’t be there. What about a “list” button for your recorded DVR programs on the surround receiver? Not there either. With the customizable universal remote, we can put any button from any remote and this eliminates the need for any other remotes. Period.
The other advantage a remote like this offers us is the ability to eliminate or hide buttons and commands that can mess up your system. Most complex systems now run the video and audio on all components through the surround receiver. Therefore, if all of your video signals go into your TV through a component or HDMI cable and you change the channel of the TV (I’m talking the actual TV, not the cablebox), you’ve lost the picture.
You probably still have sound but again, no picture. With the universal remote, we program it to put the TV on the correct input every time you press “watch TV” so even if it gets messed up (a child goes and presses buttons on the TV itself), the remote corrects the problem.
So, ask your home theater expert what remote they like best and take the frustration out of operating your system. Also, clean up that coffee table.
-Clay Hankins is the CEO of The Audio Guy, LLC located in the Dallas, TX area and serving the Dallas Home Theater and surrounding area markets.
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