Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Just a good, solid remote, June 15, 2006
After my One-For-All Kameleon went off into lizard heaven, I decided to buy this over the cheapest, yet still more expensive Logitech Harmony remote. I like this remote a lot. It has all the right buttons for me, like the guide, info, menu, exit buttons which are becoming very important in this age of Tivo and on-screen menus. I use it to control an LG HDTV tuner box, a Sony a/v receiver, a JVC DVD player, and a Mitsubishi VCR, and this remote has most of the buttons I need. The ones it doesn't have I can just learn and map onto other unused buttons.
The remote has a "volume override" feature which controls the volume of only one component - for example, a TV or an a/v receiver - no matter which component is selected. Very convenient.
The buttons are all stiff, smooth rubber and feel great. Firm, not mushy at all. The remote itself is lightweight but solid. There are no "creaks" when handling it. And unlike the cheesy appearance of the basic One-For-Alls, this remote looks good on the coffee table.
Programming it is a piece of cake: Aim it at the component, hold down the component & select buttons together for 3 seconds, enter the 3-digit code from the manual. If the code doesn't work, enter another one. When finished, press power. I forget the method for learning at the moment but it is equally easy. The remote comes with an instructional DVD if you prefer that over the manual.
The only reason I'm not giving it 5 stars is because the left side of the circular directional pad on my remote, which is plastic, takes an excessive amount of force to register a button press. This is not a huge problem for me because I use up, down, and right much more than left. Still, it is an annoyance.
I'm sorry to hear about the experience of the reviewer below, but every batch of every cheap electronic product has a few dead units in it. There's a small risk in every purchase that's part of the price we pay for being able to pay so little for electronics - it's an intentional tradeoff. Even Sony remotes come DOA - they're all made in the same Asian factories to the same quality standards. Any half decent store will exchange a broken remote for a working one for free. I would encourage the reviewer below to do so because he's missing out on a very good remote.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Works well, April 15, 2007
I bought this remote primarily as a replacement for my ReplayTV remote, which was just about worn out. It had a similar keypad layout which was appealing, and ReplayTV was listed on the package as a supported device. After entering the appropriate code, I was controlling the ReplayTV with no problems, though I didn't like some of the button mappings, so the "learn" feature worked fine in letting me correct these.
I also set it up to support several other devices (some very new, some 7-8 years old) and had no problems.
The build quality is somewhat better than I expected in an electronic device in this price range. That's probably because it's made in Korea rather than China. I'm baffled about other reviewers' comments saying the device is "light"; it's surprisingly hefty. And complaints about it being plastic? Sure, I'd love to get an aluminum remote for this price, but I live in the real world.
The reason I'm giving four stars is because of the "MacroPower" feature. I was hoping for the ability to create macros, but really all you can do with this feature is turn all your devices on and off together.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A really good remote control, August 3, 2007
After conducting an extensive amount of research on universal remote controls I decided in the end to get the URC R7, which for me, provided the best overall features, button availability and value for money. From the moment I received it and took it out of it's pack I was immediately impressed - the remote looked good, felt good in the hand, and the buttons were nice to touch and fairly responsive.
I looked at other more flashy-looking LCD display remotes as well, but the main reason I went with this hard button version was because I was a little put off by the comments from many user reviews about LCD remotes not providing enough icon/text-label combinations as well the rather clumsy neccessity of having to look on-screen for each button rather than feel your way around the remote with your fingers. Also, I wanted a remote that had all of the buttons specifically labelled for my TV and satellite TV decoder, i.e. Menu, TV Guide, Info, Exit, etc. It seems a lot of the LCD display remotes only appear to have rather obscure icons for some of these extra functions, although I'm sure the more expensive models provide user-definable labels. But they are a lot more expensive than what I could justify for a remote control! To be honest, I thought I would miss not having a unit that lit up with a flash LCD screen, but actually this is not the case. And I know I will save on batteries in the long run too.
The remote can control up to 7 components and comes with a manual and an instruction DVD, but the remote is so easy to program I didn't need to refer to the DVD at all, but it's a nice support addition. I'm pleased it has a learning mode as two of my components weren't supported in the pre-programmed code list, but it had no problem learning each of the component's functions. That said, I was able to program my TV, DVD, Satellite, CD and Stereo in about an hour and have it fully operational. I was even able to program the remote to control the air conditioning unit in AUX mode. I really like the backlight function too. When you press the Light key the text of each button is lit up in red, thereby providing a perfectly adequate ullimination for night-time control if needed. You can either choose to turn off the backlight by pressing the Light button again, or it will automatically turn off after 10 seconds since the last key stroke.
If there was any one criticism it would be that there is no easy way of knowing what component mode it's currently in without having to either remember it since you last used the remote or by having to re-select the component button again to make sure. (Although the current component button does light up when you select the other buttons). It would be great if the appropriate component button lit up when the unit sensed movement; for instance, when picking the remote up. But in the end this only saves one extra button push at worst, and is only mentioned more as as a suggestive feature rather than an absolute neccesity.
This universal remote control looks stylish, works really well and is extremely inexpensive for what it does. I would highly recommend this unit to anyone looking for a good solid all-purpose unit not fussed on having a flasher and more expensive LCD model.
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