Pros: Good button layout, works better for my digital cable box than any other I've tried.
Cons: Doesn't work for my Yamaha receiver and couldn't learn from the Yamaha remote
The Bottom Line: Very nice IF it the default settings work for your devices, but RCA should have tried a little harder to make sure it would work with non-RCA devices.
bclee's Full Review: RCA RCU810 LCD Remote Control
I have a JVC TV, GE VCR, Sony DVD, Yamaha receiver, Motorola Digital Cable box, and an ancient JVC CD player, so my system seems to be a torture test for universal remotes. A few of the above components came with universal remotes, but these never work really well for devices beyond the one they came with, and we are stuck with a minimum of 2 remotes to do any one thing with our system. Thus my quest for a universal remote.
The two most troublesome components are the cable box and the receiver, I've come across remotes that could control one or the other, but not both. I haven't seen many universal remotes that navigate the cable box's menus reasonably, and this one was perfect. It also seemed to work well for the TV, so I had high hopes. The button layout was great, and the backlighting and screen made it easy to use in a dim room.
Unfortunately, like the remote that came with the cable box (and a few others I've tried) this one was unable to control my Yamaha RX-V595 receiver. The manual listed 3 codes for Yamaha tuners, only one of which worked at all, controlling the power and volume. However few or none of the other receiver functions worked correctly, and pressing any key other than volume or power generally had undesirable results. Some of the input selection keys would select the wrong input, others put the receiver into strange modes, none would select the cable box as input. Many of the other buttons seemed to select various sound processing options regardless of what the button was labeled. In my single evening with this remote I repeatedly put the receiver in a state that required either the receiver's remote or actually power cycling the receiver to recover from.
Since it was a learning remote I hoped that I could simply reprogram the keys to the correct function, but this did not seem to work either. The remote would report success in learning from the Yamaha remote, but the keys would then do nothing. While this was better than the default for many of the buttons (making me get up and power cycle the receiver!) it wasn't a very satisfactory use of the limited memory available. I returned the remote the next day.
I've rated it as average because it did as well as any other universal remote I've tried, it worked for some but not all of my devices. If you have a Motorola digital cable box and your other components do work with this remote, you'll probably like it. If not, it's just one more remote on the pile.
Controls TV, VCR, cable box, SAT, audio, DVD and 2 AUX devices Multi-brand compatible LCD display screen and backlit keypad On-screen menu functions E...More at Amazon Marketplace
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