My venerable Home Theater Master MX-700 may be on its last legs, having fallen to the floor one too many times. The LCD has broken … err, whatever you call 'ems, so some entries have blank spaces instead of dark. At least one of the buttons has reprogrammed itself. Luckily, the dude who programmed it set it up so that both buttons on the horizontal do the same thing, and the alternate button is still working.
But this is a warning sign, yes indeedy, so I should probably start looking for a new programmable remote.
I’d like it able to handle about 10 devices (I have 7, and a cushion is nice), and it **cannot **be a touch screen, because I have a tendency to drop things or knock them off wherever they’re resting, and I don’t think a touch screen could stand up to that sort of abuse. (By way of reference, I got a Rhino-skin for my Palm Pilot for the same reason. The thing has dings, scratches, and the cover is now a trifle misaligned … but the Palm is still working perfectly.)
My cable box is a dual tuner and DVR, so it has to be able to handle switching tuners (it’s ok if that’s something to assign to a button, that’s what I have now).
It’d be nice (but not necessary) to have it programmable enough to do one-button actions, like turning on the TV and the sound system set to a TV input, or turning on the CD player and the sound system set to input from the CD player. Or even to record from, say, the phonograph to the CD recorder (CD component is an A/B deck).
Most of my equipment is about 10 years old, but it’s all pretty standard and well known manufacturers (Sony and Denon, for the most part). The only exception is my Samsung TV, which is only about a year or so old.
Yes, I plan to do the research, too, but more information is always better, and there are some very savvy Dopers.