5 Advantages of a Touch Screen Home Theater Remote Control

You’ve just put together your dream system, now you need a single home theater remote to control everything. You’ve looked around and you can’t decide what to get. The newer, full function universal remotes will control all or most of your home theater components, but you’ve seen a new touch screen remote. This article will list xx advantages to using this type of remote control to operate your home theater components.

Truly Universal

When talking about the current crop of “universal” remote controls that you can find just about anywhere, you’ll find that they aren’t truly universal. Most universal remotes won’t properly operate equipment or components that were built or released after the remote was designed. If you have a remote that has an instruction sheet/code list that doesn’t contain a particular home theater component that you own, you may get lucky and find a programming code that will at least give you some functionality, but not full functionality.

Programming Ease

You probably already know it isn’t all that easy to program a universal remote. There’s too many steps involved with programming and too many codes to look through. And the codes provided don’t always work right. With a touch screen remote, all of this goes away. Touch screen remotes are programmed in 1 of 2 ways:

• Adaptive learning-This method has you putting the remotes together, infrared to infrared, entering learning mode on the touch screen remote, assigning a button to a specific function and “teaching” it the infrared code by pressing the button on the original remote a specified number of times or for a specified period of time.
• Direct cable download-Some touch screen remotes come with a cable to connect to a serial or USB port on a computer and a disc to install a software programming utility. Install and launch the program, then pick your components from a list. If you’re component isn’t listed for some reason, just go online, log onto a specific website and download and install the new codes. Touch screen remotes that use this programming method will take much longer to become obsolete, because they can have software updates downloaded and installed using the cable and computer. If you buy a new piece of equipment 4 years from now, all you’ll have to do is log on and download the new codes.

Size

Touch screen remotes are quite a bit larger than most other remotes. The only real exception to this rule is the big button remote. This means clicking the right button will be easier and because of its size, it’ll be much harder to misplace.

Adaptability

In the future, just about all of your electronic equipment will be able to be controlled by remote. This means you’ll be able to add your coffee maker or your dishwasher to your touch screen remote and use it to turn them on and off.

Use Almost Anywhere

Touch screen remotes work slightly differently than regular remotes. Because of this, you don’t have to point them directly at the piece of equipment you wish to operate.

Touch screen remotes are expensive right now. But, they are much more versatile than regular remotes, whether original equipment or “universal”.