Is there anyone here who has retro-fitted or modified their AV2100 to have the light come on every time a button or the LCD screen is touched? This seems like a MAJOR oversite on Sony's part... and the only real flaw I've found with the remote.

Not from what I've read, and I know that people (including me) have tried to find a general solution. If you find one, please post.

My best hope is that Sony will realize that rechargable batteries are commonplace now, and give us the option to leave backlight on "infinitely" in the next upgrade version. I think battery-drain was the logic behind the 90-second light truncation, but seriously, anyone that spends $100-200 on a URC will think nothing of purchasing a battery recharging kit.

With a remote like this, they should have created a $29.95 nicad battery-and-cradle-charger accessory so that you could keep the batteries topped off and have a permanent place to store/find the remote.....

If they can create and sell them for my kid's gameboy....

Good option idea, too. These manufaturers go to all this work to make these nice products, and then do something stupid like the backlight-limit to gum it up.

Reminds me of purchasing my Nikon Coolpix, for $800 or so. Great cam, but it comes with no battery recharging (and that cam just wolfs down batts by the bushel), and a teeny flashcard RAM that will hold about 3 pics :-)

Like, what are they thinking?

Basically, I don't think there's any way to retrofit a 2000/2100 to have the backlight come on. The problem is most switches would keep "enabling" the light. And unlike the Pronto (some have fitted with a mercury switch) which keeps the backlight on no matter how many times you press the LIGHT button, the 2000/2100's light button is a toggle -- so the light would keep flickering on/off. You'd have to implement some sort of timer function that would only send the impulse once per xx seconds.

It just seems like a silly oversight, especially when you consider my $12.95 RadioShack 4-in-1 universal remote lights up each time I use any button... it seems as simple as having each button and the LCD display send a "light on" signal each time they are activated, and to have this feature adjustable whithin the light configuration screen. With this sort of usability, It would make sense to have the light come on for only 5-10 seconds, therefore overall potentially extending battery life.

The thing that makes the backlight feature so important is that the LCD display is very hard to read unless you are working in very bright lighting, and who watches television in very bright lighting? ;)

Actually I have never owned a remote where I did not have SOME complaint about the lighting functionality, the 2100 is by no means the first. It's only the most irritating because there's no excuse for it in a mid-level, state-of-the-art model, this isn't El Cheapo here.

I came to the same conclusion Daniel did about the 2100 light-switching, but perhaps there is some other unusual bit of logic available that we are all overlooking. Perhaps thinking of it less as a technical problem and more as a logical puzzle is worth a shot. Well, it's always an interesting little project to play with during commercials and bad movie scenes :-)