Philips PMDVR8 8-Device DVR and Audio Specialty Universal Remote Control

by Philips

Product Details

• Item Weight: 12 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000ALPB9
• Item model number: PMDVR8
• Batteries: 2 AAA batteries required.
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 3, 2008

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

The PMDVR8 remote is equipped to control up to eight devices, including your TV, VCR/DVR/DVD, Cable/Satellite, CD/Audio and Laser disc components. It has dedicated DVR keys so all the keys on your original Tivo or Replay DVR remote are included in this remote and highlighted in green on the keypad for easy referencing. It also includes dedicated Audio keys matching your original Audio remote and highlighted in red on the keypad for easy referencing. Plus, the PMDVR8 features keys for all the advanced DVD functions, including Subtitle, Repeat and Chapter Scan. These keys are highlighted in blue and advanced satellite functions on the keypad. It is powered to learn the functions of your original remote create macro command, displays program dialect as text through closed captioning and has a sleep timer that can be set to turn the TV off up to maximum of 99 minutes after it is programmed.

Product Description

This 8 device remote has dedicated DVR keys, so all the keys on your orginal TIVO or Replay DVR remote are included and highlighted in green on the key pad for easy referencing. The learning function allows this to learn the functions of your orginal remote. Closed caption displays the program dialect as text and the battery saver deactivates the remote if keys get stuck.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars not a good remote, October 3, 2004

By 

Long Ta "long" (Austin, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Philips PMDVR8 8-Device DVR and Audio Specialty Universal Remote Control (Electronics)

I bought this remote nearly one year ago, so i have had a good amount of time to wrestle with this remote. I am a technology afficionado and demand a lot from my hardware. Initially when I bought this remote I was extremely happy with it. I got home and was able to program most of my home theater hardware into the remote with the phillips codes providing around 75% of the correct buttons for me.

At first I was frustrated by this but since the remote is a "learning" remote I wasn't fazed. I began to individually program the missing keys into my remote. To my chagrin many keys would simply not transfer no matter how many times I tried. However these were mainly buttons i didn't use too much so I didn't worry too much about it. The learning process worked decently well and I was able to get rid of around 4 remotes.

As time progress I began to find more and more annoying quirks of the remote. If you have a separate Amp that runs the audio for your home theater system you would naturally want to have the amp volume controls in each of the remote categories (TV, VCR, DVD etc). However, if you program a volume button the to volume keys it will not perform as a volume button should. IE when you press and hold the volume increase button it should continuously send the signal so that you don't have to push the button multiple times to raise the volume to the desired level. While using my home theater system more and more I realized I needed to add more buttons to the the remote than I had initially though I needed. These are buttons such as closed captioning, audio type, etc from the dvd. I could not get the closed captioning button to learn on any button at all. This was extremely frustrating as I now needed to keep my old remotes around in case I needed to use these buttons. What's the point in having a universal remote if you still need to use the old remotes???

Also the remote is SLOW. The response time between button pushes is extremely slow and maddening, especially when you are trying to thumb through a tv guide. I tried using this remote along side my original cable box remote and the difference was night and day. The cable box remote was like a race car with the philips remote a toyota corolla.

The last straw came when I needed to replace the batteries. I removed the old batteries and put in new ones and to my utter dismay ALL OF MY CODES WERE DELETED. 1 year of gradual work to get it how I liked it and everything was gone. I couldn't believe it. The advertisement stated that there was an internal battery so that this exact thing would not happen. Thus my time with this remote has come to a very bitter end. The remote still works but I am hesitant to even give it away to a friend cause I hate it so much.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good for the price, November 15, 2003

By 

cyclista (the Midwest) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Philips PMDVR8 8-Device DVR and Audio Specialty Universal Remote Control (Electronics)

This remote has buttons for Tivo and Replay TV. It has a learning button. Permanent memory retention means that you don't lose your codes when you change the batteries. It's laid out in a way that makes intuitive sense. I picked it up and it felt good in my hand. For the price you won't get two things that I like in a remote: back-lit buttons and macros. We watch movies in low light to dark, and back-lit buttons are a must. The longevity of this product may be problematic, judging from other reviews here. I'm taking away a star because of the lack of internet support. Philips/ Magnavox has several manuals online, but not the manual for this product. (What is that about?) I did find the manual & codes at Remote Central (online: [...]), searching in the files area for PMDVR8.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, then it flaked out, January 1, 2005

By 

Vidiot - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Philips PMDVR8 8-Device DVR and Audio Specialty Universal Remote Control (Electronics)

This is the first universal remote I've seen of any price that has all the buttons I need to control my A/V setup (the main one missing from all other remotes I've tried is the two guide buttons, one for channel, one for recorded programs for a DVR), though admittedly I have not seen everything out there.

Anyway, I was able to set it up to do pretty much exactly what I want, including having the volume keys always control my Teac AV receiver, except when the remote is in TV mode.

One day the TV and DVR modes stopped working. Everything else still worked. I tried reprogramming in the codes, but they just didn't work anymore.

At best, I could use the Learn mode to get some keys for minimal TV and DVR functinoality.

But I can no longer have the volume keys do what I want--they now always control TV volume except in Audio mode.

If this thing were stable, I'd buy another five or ten to keep in case I broke them physically. But since something electronic seems busted, I don't trust it anymore.