raytsui's Full Review: Universal Remote Control SL-9000 LCD Remote Contro...
The Home Theater SL-9000 is the first programmable remote control I bought. There is an excellent *extremely* detailed analysis of its features on www.remotecentral.com so I will only summarize it here and offer my insights as a user who's owned several other remotes.
This is a fully programmable learning remote control designed as a "all-for-one" replacement of all your original remote controls. It's a traditional buttoned remote (compared to the new LCD touchscreen models). It has 55 labelled keys including 4 macro keys and a small LCD indicator for the selected device. The remote can control up to 8 devices. Getting the remote quickly to work with your equipment is quite simple because it contains a very comprehensive database of devices. The procedure to find the correct code set for your particular device is relatively easy and involves a trial and error method. Basically, you enter a code from the manual, and if it turns off your device, you stop. If it doesn't work, you pick the next code listed and try that. However, this scheme is somewhat only half successful as many of the keys will be assigned to weird places.
Fortunately, this remote is completely learnable meaning you can teach it commands from your original remote. Every button can be taught a distinct command in each device mode. It's just a matter of putting it into learn mode, pressing the button to be taught, and then pointing the original remote at the sensor at pressing the code to be learned. You repeat this for every button you want to override. In the end, I overrided *lots* of the preassigned buttons because I simply did not like where they had them assigned. The macros (a programmed sequence of command) work well enough, it's easy to program up to 10 macros with 15 commands each. There are 4 keys for macros which work in conjunction with the one of the rows of devices to provide eight (4 x 2 rows) macros and the power button itself can be taught two different macros depending on which bank of device is selected. However, you cannot program device specific macros meaning the macros are the same regardless of which device you have selected.
The remote is easy to hold with one hand and is light enough. The backlight works very well and the batteries seem to last months on end (I think I got six months out of my last set of 4 AAA with no backlight use). Also, the remote keeps its memory even with no batteries.
The range of this remote is excellent, as good as my best original remote. I can point this remote all over the room and my components pick it up.
And now the downfalls:
This remote suffers from the major problem of most learning remotes: the keys are already prelabelled with some function name. Unfortunately, many of the buttons say things that are completely unrelated to any of the functions on my original remotes. It has labels like NEXT, REAR+/-, SURR, PRO.L, INFO etc. They DO provide a bunch of sticky labels you can stick to the remote, but the problem still persists because each device has buttons that mean something different. For instance, only my VCR has a counter reset button, so it would be silly to stick a C.RESET sticker because that button means something entirely different in DVD mode.
The remote also has transport keys (PLAY, STOP, FWD, REW) that double as cursor keys. This is really bad for DVD players because if you assign the keys as transport keys, then you have to program the cursor keys somewhere else. I chose the number pad. But this is not obvious to somebody else using it (press 1 for up, press 8 for down). In this day and age of DVD players, this remote is not DVD friendly.
The price of this remote is around $100USD. I cannot recommend it because I think the price is too high considering you can buy a similar functioned $20 One for All Cinema 7 remote, a Radio Shack 15-1994 for $30 on sale. or a comparably functioned Sony RM VL900 for less than $60. In this price, this remote is the most expensive remote for its feature set. Secondly, no cursor keys makes it DVD unfriendly. I think you'd be better off with one of the cheaper or more expensive/fancier alternatives such as the Marantz RC1200 or RC2000Mk2, or even Home Theater Master's own MX500 (which is releasing sometime 2001)
The MX-500 is ergonomically designed and weight balanced to fit comfortably in one hand. The brightly backlit LCD view screen and buttons make navigat...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Controls up to ten devices Preprogrammed for over 1,000 audio/video components Learns up to 530 commands via infrared from device remotes Send out mul...More at Amazon Marketplace
Controls up to ten devices Preprogrammed for over 1,000 audio/video components Learns up to 530 commands via infrared from device remotes Send out mul...More at Amazon
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