New Remote

It cost $3. I didn't know it would come from China.

Does that include shipping?

This one is cheaper, but the shipping is not included.

I really like that place. Bought a bunch of cables and an SSD drive from them in the past few weeks.

$3 including shipping. I thought it was a bargain.

Can't beat that.

And it's a good heavy duty four foot cable -- unlike the lightweight 2'er I had before.

Because my home entertainment system has a couple different ways to access some content (like Pandora and Netflix) it took a little customization to get the remote to set up the system the way I want.

Because the new remote has a color display screen, I was able to import and use the real logos for Comcast, Blu-ray, Netflix, Pandora, SmartHub, VHS and others for these activities.

The remote also displays the logos, as well as the channel numbers, for all 48 of my identified "favorite" channels. It took a little fiddling to rearrange the icons to put all the movie channels in two rows, all the local news in one row, all the cable news in one row, all the Animal Planet/Nat Geo type channels together, and so forth. I will be reviewing and probably whittling my choices over the next few days.

This remote has the capability of controlling 15 devices, as opposed to six with my old one, so I was able to add my ancient old Panasonic VCR. Yes, I still have some VHS tapes. Maybe now I can watch them!

Be careful that you don't accidentally start a nuclear war. It almost happened to Matthew Broderick.

Can you configure the new remote to control one of these?

Everything works, and works well.

My only complaint so far is that the touch screen is glossy plastic. It should be flat or satin so it doesn't show fingerprints.

In fact, as I had hoped, the touch screen changes what commands it displays based on which device you are watching, and puts up some choices I didn't even know I had! Very smart, it pulls the feature set from some central database and displays some/most/all(?) of what every device is capable of.

So far, the only "errors" encountered have been the same ones I had with the old remote, and the reason they recommend turning everything OFF before starting a new "activity" -- that being, that some on-off switches are binary, and if you don't turn them OFF first the command to turn them ON will, in fact, shut them down.

_Howard wrote:

Can you configure the new remote to control one of these?

Fuck using the remote-controlled F-16 as a target -- what's wrong with doing remote controlled bombing runs?

NoCoPilot wrote:

Fuck using the remote-controlled F-16 as a target -- what's wrong with doing remote controlled bombing runs?

For that purpose, I believe a bomber would be better than a fighter.

NoCoPilot wrote:

...some on-off switches are binary, and if you don't turn them OFF first the command to turn them ON will, in fact, shut them down.

I can see where the binary switches would be a problem when you are executing a series of commands.

I much prefer separate on and off switches. Why manufacturers decided on binary switches is beyond me. Most of my remotes have separate switches.

Does the remote give you any aural or visual feedback when you "push" a button?

No feedback -- other than the button darkening momentarily as it activates. And the command executing of course.

The remote has some non-obvious features which are nice.

Adjustable brightness, on both the touch screen and the lights behind the "real" buttons.

Changeable background behind the touch screen. Some icons look better than others, for instance the pretty "blue rain" background tends to obscure the blue channel icons.

Default 'on' times -- when you touch the remote the lights come on. You can adjust this from 5 seconds to 30.

Default button actions -- volume up/down always controls volume, regardless of what device you're watching. Channel up/down controls TV channels when you're watching TV, but advances the chapters when watching a DVD. In the center of the remote there's a round donut, with an OK button in the middle. OK chooses or selects an option if there is one. Toggling up on the donut displays an abbreviated program listing when watching TV, just two channels. You can use it to scroll channels (OK to select a new channel). Using the left and right toggles different times on the channel you're watching. However when watching a movie, in pause mode, the left and right advance one frame at a time.

Nice programming.

Way too much for me. I don't use any remotes often enough to care about them.

Sounds nice like nice gadget, though.