Which universal remote control?

Not so long ago, one remote for the TV and one for the VCR represented the height of luxury, but now almost everything with a power button comes with its own zapper.

And as consumer electronics and PCs converge ever closer, more and more gadgets have remote controls too – devices such as media streamers, TV tuner cards, speaker systems and games consoles can all add to the growing clutter in the living room.

It’s not unusual to find half-a-dozen remotes littered around the sofa and coffee table.

Fortunately, universal remote controls can offer salvation. These are super-controllers that replace several remotes with a single, multi-purpose flipper.

The latest models aren’t just limited to TVs or DVD players, but can replace almost any kind of infra-red remote. So if you’re fed up with trying to remember which remote does what, this article is for you.

What are universal remotes?
Many years ago, someone decided that getting up out of a chair to change the TV channel was too much of a chore, and the remote control was born (fittingly, the first TV remote control was called the Lazy Bones).

Although early remotes were connected via a cable, wireless models (using radio or ultrasonic signals) soon superseded these. However, it wasn’t until the early 1980s that infra-red models appeared – and the convenience and reliability of this technology meant it became the standard.

It wasn’t long before remote overload happened and the idea of a universal remote control was hatched. Almost all modern remote controls work by sending pulses of infra-red light to the receiving device with a unique pattern of pulses, known as a code, for each different button – a bit like Morse code, only using invisible light beams.

The trick behind universal remotes is a small computer chip that can recreate any pattern of infra-red pulses, and hence can be programmed to mimic the signals sent out by other infra-red remotes.

The earliest universal remotes worked by having the user point an existing remote at the universal remote and methodically press one button at a time while the universal remote was in a ‘learning’ mode.

Although some universal remotes can be programmed this way, many are pre-configured with a large list of codes for different brands and types of device.

The user then selects the correct set of codes for a particular device in a variety of ways, as we will explain later, and the universal remote should then work like the original. It’s quick and easy.