You certainly could do this. This is the most basic form of a universal remote. However, I would argue that using something as powerful as the MX-890 this way would be something of a waste. Everyone sets up remotes differently but the was I like to do it is think out it from a functional or activity perspective.

If you look at the main menu of a remote I have setup the buttons will say things like "Watch TV", "Watch Movie", "Play XBOX", etc. When you click on one of these buttons you get everything setup and ready to handle that function.

For example, when you press "Watch TV" my remote would do the following:

• Turn on the TV and AVR if they are not on already.
• Turn on the DirecTV box
• Change the inputs on the TV and AVR to the appropriate settings
• Drop you into a device that has the controls for directv with favorite channel buttons and the avr's volume controls punched through.

This way, an end user of the remote doesn't really have to worry about how it all works.  They just pick the remote up and watch TV.  The fact that the audio is coming from the AVR is completely transparent to them.



A discrete code is one which performs a single direct function.  The most common types of discrete codes people are looking for is power and input control.

For example, good components will have discrete commands for power which means that there is a single command that turns power on and a separate command that turns power off.  The alternative to this would be a power toggle where the power state is reversed from the current state.

The use case for this is that you don't always definitively know the power state of a device.  If they have discrete power than would can always safely send a "power on" command.  If the device is already on than sending this command won't hurt anything.  With a power toggle if you just send a generic power command and the device is already on you could inadvertently turn it off.