For my birthday my brother got me a newegg gift certificate. Its easier for me to spend money on newegg then to it is to breath or keep my heart beating.

I picked up a bunch of stuff and just before checking out thought I would check out the universal remotes, especially now that the home theater was done.

Thats when I saw this little beauty. I was skeptical it could truely do everything I wanted it too given the $35 price tag. I have been pleasently suprised by this remote.

Full SIze Photos

To start with, it can learn learn the siganls of other remotes. Thats pretty standard. It has macro capabilities to allow you to do multiple actions with one button press. Ok thats a little more rare at this level. The best part, it connects to a computer for programming. Now we are talking!

I have to say the programming software that comes with the remote it a little tricky to use, and thats saying something considering I write software for a living. That said, this remote has the capability to do everything you could possible need. You can remap any button on it to any function or macro. When constructing macros, it easy to pick the functions you to perform, including adding delays between commands to allow the components to respond. For example, after you turn on my receiver it wont respond to any command for 1 seconds. This remote takes care of that. Multiple delays are allowed in each macro. Thats killer in my book.

My favorite part of the remote is that it lights up, something very important in the projector based home theater, something none of my other remotes had. You can change the illumination intensity, duration, behavior, and the LCD screen brightness and duration. 

I only wanted to map out the buttons I would actually use for each component in order to avoid making the universal remote too complicated. Then I found out I could assign a human readable label to each button. I can press the light button + another button to read the label of button before actually doing the action. I think this is a great way to work around not having a fully reprogrammable user interface, like a touch screen.

I also love the fact that I can map the buttons however I want. For example, when the remote is controller the DVD player, the volume is still controller the receiver. You can mix and match buttons however you want. Its incredibly flexible, and also incredibly annoying to program. At least now though I can actually back up my remote program on my PC, so I dont have to worry about changing the remote batteries and having to waste time reprogramming it.

After using the remote now for about a week I can actually say that I have not picked up any of my original remotes once. That is a hefty compliment for this sony remote, which makes it the best $35 I (or perhaps my brother) ever spent!