I'm in the process of a full home renovation of course including an updated home theater and whole house Sonos set up with 5 zones. My installer had initially spec'd a URC MX series remote with base station as we're doing a remote rack in the basement to house the amplifier, cable box, receiver, sonos connects and other pieces of gear. Local to the room I will have the TV and a PS4 which I use as my bluray player as well.

I'm just curious if there are any other suggestions beyond the URC gear that I should be looking at. I know most of the other consumer options such as Harmony or Savant would require some annoying IR Blaster and Home Hub combinations which are not my preference. I'm ok with a Harmony or Savant for the master bedroom upstairs as I only need local IR for that but I'd like to be able to also control the lighting down the road, our nest thermostats and other smart home additions I plan on making down the road.

I appreciate the input on this in advance!

A few things:

1) You can think of the Hub and the URC base station as the same thing. If you have gear in a remote location, you're going to need some form of base station/hub/processor.

2) Look at Savant, URC or RTI. Harmony is fine if you have a TV, cable box and a Blu-Ray player. Add surround sound in the mix and maybe Zone2/Zone3...it's a nightmare. We pull out a fair number of Harmony remotes and replace them with URC or RTI. If ease of use is important for you and others, heed this step.

3) For automation needs, look at URC's TC line. Their CCP line won't work for what you listed above. URC TC, RTI and Savant have the ability to handle Nest, Ring, Lutron, etc.

Where are you located?