One For All URC7960 Universal Smartcontrol Remote

Hi,Looked everywhere for the right remote. Price was no object to me, i but style and functionality were.Would be willing to pay up to 60 quid for this remote given the functionality and styling.Have setup my xbox, amp, sky box and 3 tv's to all use this one remote and everything works as it should.Most features you need are available by default but it's easy enough to add more.For those who have difficulty with macros it is a little tricky and there is no proper guide on how to do it (or rather how not to do it).The trick is to use an 'unused button' e.g. the skip previous/next track buttons in my case, and also not having one of the multi hardware button icons selected.Once you've figured this out, you'll find programming all kinds of macros are possible, so now i can switch on/off my xbox, amp, and tv; or switch on/off my amp, tv and sky box, and change to the channel i want by default; or on/off my tv and amp and switch the AV-in to either my PS3, or Wii.All with the one remote.The good -+ Looks great. Nice choice of colours, good shape.+ Handles 6 devices effortlessly.+ Price is a bargain for what it can do.+ Macros work nicely once you get the hang of them.+ Can map and remap buttons and functions at will.The bad -- It doesn't have seperate buttons purely for macros. 2 or 3 'spare buttons' would have made this remote perfect.

The URC7960 has the distinguished status of the "one remote to rule them all" in my living room, and has succeeded where others have failed. This alone makes it a sound purchase and I am happy with it. It's also nicely made, feels solid and looks good. It's actually more attractive than any of the remotes I replaced with it which I am surprised by. I use it to control a modern Sky+ HD box, Samsung TV, Sony Bluray, Sony stereo and a GMYLE Windows Media Center remote. I also tested and found it to work with a Panasonic TV, Samsung DVD and Humax PVR. In each case I had to manually copy at least one button from the original remote to get all the functionality I needed, but this was OK. It did not work with my other Sony stereo or no-name DVD player, which was a mild disappointment hence only 4 stars. I notice a lot of claims that it works with "any IR device" (by commentators I think not the manufacturer) but this is only true of devices which align to the very common IR standard. So I think it probably works with 99% of new equipment and 80-90% of devices 10 or more years old. This is much better coverage than other "all in one" devices I've tried.Set up is dead easy if you happen to have a device which is fully pre-programmed and acceptable in cases where you have to learn a few buttons. Daily use is easy. In particular it is much easier to use than a Sky remote (and cheaper!). It is mildly annoying to have to cycle through the different devices instead of having a dedicated button for each (no idea why they didn't do this?) and there are only just enough buttons in some cases. Signal strength seems to be good and it has run on its original batteries with daily use for 8 months so far.

First of all, this remote looks great - much better than I'd expect for £15. The central ring lights up in a nice blue colour when a button is pressed, and a blue light shines beneath each of the 6 AV options to indicate which is selected.Out of the box, a 'quick guide' helped me set up 5 products in about 5 minutes. This covered all the usual brands, in my case a Toshiba TV/Sky+ box/Xbox 360/Yamaha Amp/Sony Blu-Ray. I was amazed that I could set everything up so quickly, and was particularly pleased this can be used to browse the Xbox 360 (under the 'Game' option).If I had one complaint about the remote it's that it can be a pain to rotate from one device to the other (e.g. from TV to Xbox) but I could make better use of the inbuilt macro buttons to mitigate this.One great feature I liked was that the volume controls can be set to always control an amplifier, rather than the currently selected device, so you won't be changing the volume on the TV by mistake if you use an amp.Overall, this is an outstanding product for the price, and removes 5 remotes from cluttering the living room.

I'm so glad I took a gamble on this remote as I recently upgraded with a new tv, surround system, hdd pvr and bluray player as well as the virgin cable box. It works beautifully with all of them so instead of having 5 remotes 'nightmare' lined up on the puffy, I only have 1 on the arm of the setee (happy chap). You can also set the tv's, or in my case the 2.1 surround sound as the default volume regardless of what mode your in so you don't have to move back into amp each time to adjust the volume. You can also change the funtion of a button to whatever you set it to, to suite you. I also still have room to do away with the hifi remote! The quick set is so simple for basic function usage but you'll still have learn some functions as my internet tv has quite a few but it is still so easy to do as it learns-copys the functions straight from the original remote. Never dreamt it would work as well as it does and is so CHEAP, but besides the price, it has a quality look and feel to it. As you you can probably gather by now that I'm well chuffed with my purchase and may even get another one as back up just in case I can't buy a replacement in the future.