Finding the right remote

This holiday season, my NLP (remember, that’s Nurturing Loving Partner) and I went over to Vancouver Island to spend Christmas with my family. My parents, who I am loathe to describe as elderly, are none-the-less slowing down a bit, and have been reluctant to host the customary family Christmas the last couple of years, and have instead fled to warmer climes. This year, they decided to host again, and it was great to be back home.

This year, the whole family agreed to change the way we exchange gifts. Instead of buying a gift for everybody in the family, which is exhausting work and usually results in a lot of gift returns, gift moth-balling, and re-gifting, this year we decided to draw names from a hat and focus on buying something really nice for just one person. The rules are somewhat loose, so if we want to buy additional gifts for others, we can (of course, this doesn’t work for children, but our whole family has grown up – sort of).

Naturally, Murphy’s Law dictates that the name that gets drawn is the toughest possible person to shop for, but that’s part of the challenge. In the process of shopping for my brother-in-law, I had the great idea of getting him a universal remote to get rid of all those remote controls on the coffee table. It was then that my sister informed me that they already have a Personal Video Recorder (PVR – see last week’s column), which comes with its own universal remote. However, I then realized that a universal remote would be the ideal gift for my mother and father. My mother, a self-admitted gadget-aholic, has a fairly extensive entertainment system, complete with 5 remote controls. The system has become so complex, there is now an instruction sheet sitting on the coffee table next to the labeled remote controls. To turn on TV, use remote “A”, to watch a movie, use remote “D”, and so on. My father doesn’t even know how to turn on the TV, he just gets my mother to do it.

So I went shopping for a universal remote control for Mom and Dad. I discovered that there are two types; really cheap, and really expensive. There are many varieties of really cheap remotes, ranging from about $9 to about $30. Then there are the really expensive types, which range in price from $130 to about $700. Interestingly, the expensive ones are all made by the same manufacturer, Logitech, which is best known for its line of computer peripherals. I started my search among the cheap remotes, then did some research (using the internet, natch), and came up with a Sony model which did everything I wanted, the most important of which was the ability to run macros (a macro is a way to combine numerous commands into a single button press), but alas, I could not find this particular Sony model in any of the retail shops. Then my NLP discovered that the $130 Logitech Harmony model, which was over my allotted budget for not-pulled-from-the-hat family members, was on sale for $80 at Staples, so we took the plunge and bought it.

The big difference between the Logitech Harmony and the cheaper ones is the method of programming. Harmony remotes are designed to be programmed through a PC using a USB cable; then it’s a matter of picking the component model names from a list, and the software then downloads the appropriate driver from the internet. The wizard asks a few questions, and the appropriate macros are built, and hopefully all is bliss. This is all theoretical, it’s Christmas Day as I write this, and we haven’t opened our presents yet, so stay tuned for the real story on Universals. Meantime, Merry Christmas!