It seems that sadly OFA have stopped making their only blind/elderly-friendly One For All Big Easy TV remote URC 7210 which was perfect for my needs.

I need an ongoing reliable source of any similar remote which allows the key-magic 994 EFC trick to re-assign keys.

I have a whole draw full of branded and unbranded remotes and decided to stop when I reached £50 on remotes which didn't fit the bill, but was nearly tempted by Asda's URC20 D1F which I saw today:
[Link: direct.asda.com]

So I guess that's a long way of asking a simple question: do One For All make chipsets for any "own brand" remotes? If I knew I could key-magic this Asda one, that would be ideal, but as I say, at some point I've got to stop throwing cash down the drain.

So any pointers would be appreciated! Thanks.

I can't tell you much about remote styles, but OneForAll remotes are really manufactured by a company called Universal Electronics, Inc. Their biggest customer is the US cable company Comcast, with perhaps 30 million remotes. Over the years, Radio Shack has retailed remotes by UEI, the Atlas series are used by cable/sat companies world wide, Slingboxes carry an UEI chip inside, some Prontos also. Some RCA remotes are UEI, as is high end Vizio TV remotes, and recently a Sanyo remote. Nearly all UEI made remotes respond to the 994 command. If you find the manual with setup code lists, we can guess if the remote is made by UEI. That wouldn't assure that the 994 commands are available in the remote, but it would be likely.

However, this is all academic unless you can find a style you need.

They still make the big easy as far as I can tell.

[Link: oneforall.com]

That Asda doesn't really look like a UEI (one-for-all's OEM) to me , so it wouldn't do key magic. In the UK, UEI is also the OEM for sky, dreambox, slingbox, etc.

Do you really need key magic, or would a learning remote do?

Thanks for both replies. Taking mdavej's reply:


[Link: oneforall.com]

It's true they still list it if you do a search, but I suspect that's for support and historical reasons. But I promise you, it is not made any more. Here is their reply to me after retailers and wholesalers told me they could get no more stock:

"We don't have a real remote anymore targeting your audience. The Big Easy is out of stock and end of life, meaning no more are produced."


The thing about the Big Easy, is that it found great favour with less nimble fingers and failing eyesight. It's also very robust, and it has exactly the number of keys I need, no more no less, and the price was good. Occasionally, they come up on ebay for good prices, but 3 or 4 here and there isn't a reliable source, really.

I tried cheap learning remotes, but they all had various failings, from size of keys, to randomly losing functions when batteries out for too long.
When I'm posting them out, they can't have batteries in, for example.

But now you've both given me some pointers for OEM names, I'll take a punt with a couple of those if I see something looking good and priced right, and report back!

Thanks