Okay I have a large number of "universal remotes" and a large number of different viewing areas in this house. All have their pros and cons I understand but now that my cable company is forcing us to get cable boxes for all TVs that want any kind of signal I need to find a GOOD brand rather than this hit and miss.

There are actually 5 different places that will have at LEAST two devices and 3 will have 4-5 (TV, Required Cable box descrambler, WD TV Live, Audio, and Blu-ray players)

I will type them out with What I have(or had)/What I don't like.

1) Harmony One/Do not like the configuration software, Do not like the desync due to the "activites" would much rather just like to have a device setting and single button to a macro, Do not like how it messes up the inputs due to the number of selections rather than just jumping to the right input.
2) Harmony 700/Do not like the configuration software, do not like the activities.
3) URC Digital R50/Do not like that the configuration can't be downloaded and sent to multiple URC devices.
4) URC MX-700(had)/Did not like the software was locked down from residential buyers who bought not from a reseller, Worked great until it was dropped repeatedly and LCD and backlight broke making the remote hard to use.

Ultimately I need to get about 5 remotes so would like to keep this on the cheaper side. They need to support 2-5 devices of any type. I would LOVE it if it had a MX-700 type software where you connect the remote to the PC download the configuration file and then reupload to another remote. The reason for this is many rooms have at least 1-2 of the same devices in it and it would make reprogramming so much easier. The harmony ones I have two 700's and I have to have separate profiles for the two of them and they can't cross send information which disappointed me immensely. I am not a big fan of "activities" and would much rather just have a few more buttons to support the few power/input macros I use.

So in summation -
5 Remotes.
Best to copy programming from one to another.
Support up to 5 devices.
Uses Macro buttons and not "activities".
As cheap as possible because I have to buy so many remotes.

Any help you guys can provide on some remotes that support as many of these pain points as possible will be appreciated.

The cheap way to do this is to use a JP1 remote, and buy a $10 USB to Serial interface cable to program it.  These are all hard button remotes, but macros can be put on nearly all the buttons.  For example, the RCA RCRP05B costs $11 each. You can control pretty much any component with these remotes using the RMIR software.

Here's a good interface cable.

 

Thanks, this is pointing me towards what I am looking for. Is there any "list" of remotes that work for this? I appreciate the one you pointed me to but I have to wonder if there is one with a few more buttons, maybe one of those ones with the rows on the bottom that could easily support macros on the same remote without compromising other buttons? The one linked I feel I would have to limit it out a bit. I am not seeing anything when I do JP1 remote searches so wondering if there is some other way I should be looking at the types compatible with this solution?

I don't know of a good list with recent remotes.  The tail end of this thread compares some remotes.  Nearly any remote made by OneForAll is JP1 capable.

But I'm a little confused by your concern that the RCRP05B doesn't have enough buttons. It has 61. There are 8 buttons across the bottom which mostly are labeled as PIP functions. I think any button on the remote except Setup can have a macro assigned to it.  Also bear in mind that the RCRP05B supports either global or device specific macros.

I guess after looking at it this further it would work. I was thinking not enough keys but didn't notice the top part was already all the DVR type buttons (just saw the center ring and thought of it as being the onlyoone and DIDN'T want to configure buttons different configurations per device selection. I could just set the macros to the bottom 8 device configurations.

I don't suppose you know of one like this but backlit? I just looked and noticed this does not have that part. I like the support of global macros of this current one you have linked so is there an example remote that is backlit and supports global macros? I looked up a few backlit modles and I notice the ones I do like don't support global macros.

Both the Atlas 1056B01 and the newer but cosmetically identical 1056B03 are backlit.  These have 5 device buttons and internally also have 5 devices.  The RCRP05B has 5 device buttons and 8 internal devices.

Both Atlas remotes can do global macros; the B03 can also do Device Specific ones.