Hi Kinsekd. My favourite remote is the Home Theater Master MX-500 at $189. But for your needs you could look at the MX-700 from the same people. The MX-500 meets all of my needs, except for one samll irritation, but controls just ten devices and is limited in the macros it can store. The MX-700 can control 20 devices and has an enormous macro capability, but goes for $500.
I like them because I prefer real keys over LCD. If you are with me on that one then read on. You are best to go to www.universal-remote.com to see what I mean. The remote is quite large, but it is thin at the bottom and so easy to hold and press buttons at the same time with the one hand. The transport keys (ie. play, ff, rew, stop, pause etc) are separate from the menu navigation keys - which is really important. There are plenty of hard keys that you can label via an LCD screen, and the LCD screen is very easy to read (unlike many others). It has a very useful additional feature of being able to label a large number of TV stations via the LCD screen so that you can get to them directly without using a channel number.
I only have one quibble with the MX-500. You can name the actual devices being controlled via the LCD screen, which is great compared with many other hard key remotes, and you select the device by pressing the hard key beside it. The problem I have is that if you just press the key briefly then the only thing that happens is the remote changes to be controlling the device selected. You can only set of a command or a macro from pressing the device key, by holding it down for a whole second. This is a deliberate design by the manufacturer who argues, correctly, that there are times you want to do one or other of these things. I agree, but more casual users of the remote such as my wife and children find it difficult to remember to hold down the selection key for a whole second so that the sound and vision on the system can be set to the device they just selected.
Apart from that small but irritating issue, I have found the MX-500 to be the ideal hard key remote after trying many others. Additionally the quality of the unit is superb.
If you are happy to press LCD keys, then I reckon you could probably come up with a better remote. But if there is a better hard key remote than the MX-500 or MX-700 then I would love to know about it too.
I like them because I prefer real keys over LCD. If you are with me on that one then read on. You are best to go to www.universal-remote.com to see what I mean. The remote is quite large, but it is thin at the bottom and so easy to hold and press buttons at the same time with the one hand. The transport keys (ie. play, ff, rew, stop, pause etc) are separate from the menu navigation keys - which is really important. There are plenty of hard keys that you can label via an LCD screen, and the LCD screen is very easy to read (unlike many others). It has a very useful additional feature of being able to label a large number of TV stations via the LCD screen so that you can get to them directly without using a channel number.
I only have one quibble with the MX-500. You can name the actual devices being controlled via the LCD screen, which is great compared with many other hard key remotes, and you select the device by pressing the hard key beside it. The problem I have is that if you just press the key briefly then the only thing that happens is the remote changes to be controlling the device selected. You can only set of a command or a macro from pressing the device key, by holding it down for a whole second. This is a deliberate design by the manufacturer who argues, correctly, that there are times you want to do one or other of these things. I agree, but more casual users of the remote such as my wife and children find it difficult to remember to hold down the selection key for a whole second so that the sound and vision on the system can be set to the device they just selected.
Apart from that small but irritating issue, I have found the MX-500 to be the ideal hard key remote after trying many others. Additionally the quality of the unit is superb.
If you are happy to press LCD keys, then I reckon you could probably come up with a better remote. But if there is a better hard key remote than the MX-500 or MX-700 then I would love to know about it too.