Universal Remote Control

I have a relatively complicated AV setup at home, currently consisting of:

- a Toshiba TV
- an Onkyo Receiver
- a Sony 5-Disc DVD Changer
- a Sony 5-Disc CD Player
- a Sony "Fucking" VCR
- a Sony PlayStation 2
- a Sony PSOne
- a Nintendo GameCube
- a Microsoft Xbox
- a Sega Dreamcast
- an RCA DirecTV receiver

I need to switch between all these and control 'em and all that good stuff, and it's led to me having a moderately complicated remote collection. The need to consolidate has been obvious to me for a long time, but I'm finally just now getting around to it.

I've spent the last week or so researching remote controls, trying to find a good one that will do everything I want it to.

I think I've found it, and it's the Sony RM-VL900 (you can read a pretty thorough review of it at http://www.remotecentral.com/vl900/index.html ). It's about $60 locally, but it appears as though it will do the job. So, anyone own this? Any stories about it?

It'll control up to 8 devices, has programmable macros up to 16 operations in length (for example: turn on DVD player, turn on TV, turn on receiver, select DVD input on receiver, play DVD - 5 operations and I'm watching a DVD at the touch of a button), learn functions from other remotes, blah blah blah. Pretty advanced remote for $60, and most of the reviews I've read (95%) say that it's a very good value for the money and worth every penny.

I'll obviously update this once I get it with impressions and that sort of thing. I'm expecting maybe an hour of configuration and I should be good to go. So, I'm gonna swing by Circuit City on my way home and pick it up. Wee!

[Elspode]

So, did you get it? How's it work?

I'm curious, because I suffer from nearly the same conundrum, and am eager to have you used as a technological guinea pig.

Do share your unified remote experience!

[Tobiasly]

Me personally, I <i>like</i> having ten different remotes sitting on the coffee table.

For one thing, it shows how pimp your setup is. For another, the daunting display of gadgetry discourages spousal units and the technologically retarded from attempting to fuck with anything they shouldn't be fucking with.

Well see, those people that I'd like to discourage do it anyway, so I wanted to make it simpler for them, so that they wouldn't fuck things up. I came home one night and surround was no longer working. Took me an hour to figure out exactly what happened and how to fix it. Yeah, that was an hour I could have been sleeping or playing Super Smash Brothers Melee.

The remote is awesome. I'm not even done programming it yet and it's awesome. But I'll reserve final judgement until I've been using it a month or two. I just needed to get something to clean up the clutter. We don't have a coffee table yet, so it's kinda sitting on one of those TV dinner trays beside my chair. Not exactly the best place to have six remotes.

But yeah, I'm really impressed with it. Build quality is good, it works as advertised, and you can re-program almost *every* button individually. It holds memory for some 190 or 280 buttons (as opposed to the usual 30 or so on learning remotes), which means you can basically reprogram it for every component you have and it'll still have a few spots in memory free.

Good stuff. Like I said, I'll write up more as I have it. I haven't tested the macro functions yet, but they're next.

[elSicomoro]

I saw it yesterday, and it's pretty sweet: doesn't look overly complicated, small size, easy to use.

[juju]

Yeah, but what about his remote control?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Bwahahahahahahahahahaha.