What is the best universal remote out there at a reasonable price?
There are many universal remotes out there, but outside of turning on, switching channels, playing & recording, most don't seem to control all functions so you still have to keep the original remote to set schedules for the VCR or the contrast, brightness, etc for TV's and so on. Even if some of these are controllable by the remote, good luck in finding where they are or remembering what button to push. If all the buttons were on the remote, it would be the size of the family car. Using the original remote to program the codes in the univeral remote would be long and tedious to get all the functions from the old remote.
My idea of a perfect remote would be one that would allow you to select each device by a single button and have a touch screen that would be setup to emulate all the device's functions. It would probably have to be set up using a code like most do today, but I would think that downloading the functions from the internet or an included CD would be more practical since loading and maintaining all the functions you would need would be very hard in the remote itself. I would think doing the setup and generating the macros would best be done on a computer also.
Is there any remote out there that does this that does not cost as much as a TV itself?
I have seen products by a company called Universal Remote Control that are interesting. The MX-350 Osiris has some nice features and can control things by RF. The price at around $130 (street) and its associated MRF-250 RF receiver (about $60 street) are reasonable. My son just got this unit with his home theater. I am going to check it out, but I thought I would see what you-all thought.