I received a Sony RM-AV3100 remote for Christmas. We just moved into a new house in December, and my wife and I have been going nuts with all the remotes to control all of our new toys. The house is not all that fancy, but we have a good collection of equipment:

The main entertainment room has two dish network receivers with DVR's on each, 1 DVD, 1 VCR, an AM/FM receiver stereo surround-sound thing and a TV. Pretty simple stuff - 5 or 6 remote controls, I think. The house has the video, phones, computer, god-knows-what-else networked everywhere and I'm told there is an I/R repeating system built in,so we can control the sats, dvds, etc., from other tv's in the house, but you couldn't tell it by me so far. There is also some X-10 stuff here and there, and we're wired for a multi-zone audio distribution system with what looks to be several miles of cat-5 and speaker wires.

The instructions with the 3100 may as well be written in Japanese. Typical Sony instructions- terrible to understand. I would have better luck climbing into the space shuttle and blasting off on my own. I have more electronic experience than your average idiot on the street, but this remote looks like I need to go back to college to program it, and I just dont have the time to shop around for an easier device to learn.

So here's the question: Do I bite the bullet and keep this 3100 or is there a better, more intuitive device out there that will run the above components from one device that doesnt take a college degree to master? Is this 3100 worth keeping or is there a better choice? It was purchased at Best Buy, so I can still return it for something else. I have no clue which one might be better..... or worse!

Thanks for the advise.

JIM

This message was edited by RemoteJim on 01/09/05 04:16 ET.

you give alot of info but doesnt appear relevant to your quest. i would look at the mx850 by home theater master. it wont control x - 10 though. whe used with a mxf250, it will work without a repeater for the other room.

wheres the guy that installed this stuff? he should be able to help too

Just curious, oex, but why no x-10 with 850? wouldn't an IR543 (?) do the trick?

Yes it will control an IR543, but not X-10 directly.