It’s inevitable, I guess, but your remote now looks more like a PDA than a PDA does. RCA have just released three new “universal learning remotes” which can control multiple components and can implement multiple commands with the SmartMacro? feature. “The new line of RCA LCD remote controls reflects a shift in the remote control business to higher end, fuller featured models,” explained David Geise, Vice President, Consumer Solutions, Thomson. “As consumers enhance their current home entertainment setups with more advanced products, they are seeking more sophisticated remotes that are easy to program and these three new models meet these requirements.”
Now, being a guy with a dozen remotes around the house, I can see the advantages of all this. Indeed, the SmartMacro feature, that enables consumers to program a series of events to occur in sequential order — for example, set up the remote to turn on the TV, set it to input one, turn on the satellite receiver and then set it to a specific channel — sounds kinda useful. It just seems kinda sad that the device to run our TV is more sophisticated than a computer was about three weeks ago.