Finally threw away the other remotes
Written: Nov 06 '99 (Updated Nov 06 '99)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Don't need any other remotes, wheel is useful
Cons: A little buggy, heavier and slower than it should be, expensive
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| kclemson's Full Review: Harman Kardon TC 1000 Take Control Universal Remot... |
My husband and I bought our first house last year, and with the house came, finally, the purchase of a "real" home entertainment system. Amp, DVD player, 5 speakers, DSS, the works. I, of course, am fresh out of college where I had a TV, a TV remote, and an occasionally-working VCR that did not have a remote. I confess, I was proud of myself that I was able to get my little old TV and VCR to even speak to each other.
So imagine my joy when my husband runs out and buys all this hardware and adds several remotes to our little pile. I'm a fairly technical person with computers, but when it comes to AV I'm a neophyte. Soon after the purchase of these new toys, we decided to check out the IRIQ. Programming it was quick and easy, and it's easy to lay out the design in a way that makes sense.
Pros
* Backlighting
Any $200 remote without this feature isn't worth buying, of course :-)
* Macros
You can program a series of events that will fire on the press of one button. One problem with this, however, is that some hardware like our VCR doesn't have different signals for ON and OFF, so if the VCR's already ON and you press the macro button that would turn on the VCR, it will actually turn it off.
* Fit and comfort
I have tiny hands and it fits fairly easily in one hand, although two is best. And even when held in one hand, my thumb can reach all the buttons in a row, which I couldn't say for some of our other old remotes.
* Layout
In addition to the programmable display, there are 5 physical buttons and one wheel on the remote. One button is labeled Menu that zaps you to the last menu you were at, or the home menu. Pretty convenient when you're poking around through levels of menus. The volume controls are physical buttons, so if you adjust the volume frequently (as I do) then it's very easy to do without even looking at the remote. One of the nicer features of the IRIQ is the 'wheel', similar to the wheel on microsoft's wheelmouse. You can use the wheel to go up and down through channels - easier on the fingers than pressing up or down constantly.
Cons
* If you're not looking too closely, it's very easy to press the wrong button. My fingertips are small but the button sizes are small enough that I sometimes unintentionally press the wrong one.
* It's fairly slow compared to other remotes now on the market. After you press a button it takes a short amount of time to do that action or go to that menu. This only applies for the programmable buttons, the channel and volume changer are plenty fast for me.
* There are a few bugs we've noticed.. Often when scrolling through channels on DSS, when we scroll up it will go down one channel instead. Pretty annoying, although there might be a fix that we don't know about.
* It's heavier than our other remotes, which is understandable but worth mentioning.
We were able to get the IRIQ at a significant discount (we paid around ~150 when it was ~300 retail), which makes the cons much more manageable for us. If we'd paid full retail I would rate this a 3, but since we were able to get it at a discount, it's a 4 star remote.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
kclemson
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Member: KC Lemson
Location: Redmond, WA
Reviews written: 24
Trusted by: 11 members
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