I have a pioneer remote that came with my Receiver and it's best function is something I can't seem to find on anything else:

It has a small subsection that is dedicated to the TV only, no matter which device you select, so you have full control over the TV at all times. It has a power button, volume control, channel select, and input select just for the TV.

This might seems trivial but it is very useful and I've grown accustomed to it. Oh, and not to mention my technically-challenged wife (don't ask!) can't live without it.

Are there programmable remotes that can do this?

Any ideas?

Many remotes allow for "Punch-Thru" which will allow the volume, channel, mute, power, and some other persistent buttons to always that function of that single device. Pretty much every URC Pro remote has that ability, some more buttons than others.

I'm not sure what capability you'd like to see. As JoeFlabitz has said, many remotes have Punch-thru. PT means that the Vol+/-, Ch+/-, etc. buttons on the remote always control the TV, no matter which device mode the remote is in. A Power button configured as a PT seem problematic to me, but it is common to set up a macro which turns all components on or off.

But that's different from a remote which has two separate sets of volume buttons, one of which controls e.g. the volume on the currently active device, while the other always controls the TV. This kind of capability is also available in universal remotes, but typically the difficulty is in finding buttons with mnemonic names.

The URC Pro line of remotes are certainly nice remotes, but if you're looking for something much cheaper, many of the remotes made by Universal Electronics can do either scenario.

For example, RCA RCRP05B ($20 at BestBuy) has the volume and channel punch throughs (but not power).

It also has a separate group of 8 buttons, which are labeled
PIP     Swap   Move   Ch+
Input Macro1 Macro2 Ch-
You could assign the TV power function to PIP, TV Input to Input, TV Ch+/- to Ch+/-, and TV Vol+/- to Macro1/Macro2. Or, in another section of the remote there are two other +/- pairs that we could map TV volume to.

And, depending on what is desired, it is possible to combine the Punch Through approach with assigning some of the TV functions to separate buttons.

Thanks for the info. I understand punch-thru but I was really looking for separate buttons.

What about the remotes with the hardware buttons alongside the screen - could these be used as punch-thru and assigned custom names? Just taking a shot in the dark :).

Thanks

In the case of URC remote with buttons along the side of the display, you can do anything you want with those buttons.

Analoguesque,

Do you really want a LCD screen remote, or perhaps you didn't understand that the $20 remote I suggested will do what you asked for?

Recently over at AVS forums, you posted that "Only problem with the stupid Input selection is that it pops up a menu and you have to move to the selection you want and press Enter. The popup menu will NOT disappear from the screen unless you press enter or exit. So annoying."

You can solve that with a macro, but Pioneer receivers typically have discrete input commands which will select the input you want without any popup menu. That's faster and better. Please tell us your reciever model, and we can probably tell whether it has discretes for the inputs you need.

Then maybe one of the URC experts can tell us whether the R50 (that you inquired about at AVS) can shoot those discretes.

The $20 remote (probably--we need to know the Pioneer model number) can be quickly manually programmed to send the discretes, and if the R50 can't send the discretes, you can use the cheap one to teach the discrete to the expensive remote.

3FG is right. If you're looking for a functional remote that does what you ask for the best price, go with the RCA. If you need a little more flash with a pretty color screen, go with the URC. My Yugo gets me where I need to go, but a Benz would make me look good getting there...