Hi All,

My daughter bitting habits combined with her saliva on the USB connector caused trouble to my Harmony 659 :) Not to mention the buttons missing rubber bits. I have tried fixing and it lasted for about 2 weeks. Now it does not work again (might be related to the bitting/saliva incident). I will try Harmony but since it is out of the warranty period I think it's done. I don't want to spend another ~100 bucks for a replacement. Is there anything I could have on the One for All or Radio Shack Line Up that would replace my 659.
Musts: Control all my AV gear
Macros to turn in stuff and change inputs, etc
TV=Mitsu 48-413
DVD Player/HDTV STB= LG LG 3510
Amp= Panasonic SAXR50
Echostar = DVR510
LCD Screen that gives me acess to common used commands
Good WAF and easy to use

Extras: These are pluses that are welcome but not 100% needed
IR543 - light controls

Is there something in the 30 bucks range or am I asking for too much. I do have all my original remotes.

They're selling the harmony 768 for $49 after $10 rebate on amazon.com

[Link: amazon.com]

The URC-6131, 8011 or 8810 would work for you, or if you want the LCD display you could go with a URC-8910. Going up even more, and probably past the price you want to spend, is the 9910, with RF repeater for extended range.


They would all do that, and if you couldn't do it out of the box, they are jp1 ready. The 8810 and 9910 don't even require adding headers or EEPROMs. If you can use the USB cable and Harmony interface then you can easily use the jp1 interface.


Yup.


Still OK.


Here is where you could run into trouble if you can't bend on this requirement. If you go with one of the remotes listed above with dedicated macro buttons, they serve the same purpose. The beauty of jp1 is that almost any button (including the device buttons) can be programmed with a macro. Most of the buttons can also be learned to. Of the remotes I listed, the 8011 only has one macro button, where the others have seven (I am counting the Lx buttons)


Yup.


I don't know what this is.


The RF enabled remotes go a little out of that range, but the others can be found for about that price.

I have a TiVo, and find that the best remote for me all around is the 6131. I put the EEPROM and header in it, and loaded the extender that the jp1 group came up with and it was so WAF friendly that my mother-in-law actually had me program one for her to use with her setup (she doesn't have TiVo, but digital cable). Of course my wife loves it, and even my 5 year old can turn things on and control them when we tell him he can watch a DVD. I set it so that Power turns everything OFF, regardless of it's state, and pressing a device button sends the macro corresponding to that device (DVD, TV, CBL/SAT) and turns everything ON (regardless of it's previous state) and sets it to the correct settings.

The IR543 is a device that converts IR commands to X10. X10 commands control my ligths. So I could turn on, off dim, brigh, etc from my remote. Thanks for the inputs though. I will look more into the remotes you listed.