Universal Remotes.Follow

I upgraded to DVR service from my cable company. But the remote they use kind of sucks. It comes with a default "5 minutes forward" and "5 minutes backward" button, but nothing smaller. And the cheapo remotes they offer are not programmable like some of the ones I've been looking at. Seems that there are remotes out there that can be programmed with things like a "30 second skip" or "15 second replay". That'd be perfect...

But I cannot find them. And the ones I do find are old, and people say they don't work with new cable/dvr boxes.

Where can I get a non-crappy DVR remote to work with my cable boxes and DVR box.

(Motorola DCX3501-M and DCX3200 boxes)

The only universal remote I've remotely been interested in looked like a magic wand, with a few discreet controls tucked into the handle. It was very expensive, so really nice idea and execution, but no cigar from me.

The DVR with Verizon FIOS allows you to program the amount of time to skip ahead and/or back through the menus on DVR itself. I usually keep the forward skip at 30 seconds, and back around 10-15.

The DCX3501-M is the DVR. The DCX3200 is just a standard HD box. I have one DCX3501 and two DCX3200s. They have any-room capabilities, but I have not hooked them up to my local network. It isn't something I'm interested in doing at the moment, and I'm not sure if it's something I'd have to pay extra for to get the feature enabled on the DVR box.

Some remotes are programmable with the key moving/remapping feature, but the model I have is not. It lacks the SETUP button. There is a proprietary 4 pin port on the back of the remote that can be hooked up to another proprietary remote programming box. Using that it's possible to re-program or remap buttons. But I don't want to bother with it. Looking through all the remote styles available from Charter I don't see any that would have the SETUP button needed to map keys.

From what I gather, the 30 second skip is available for the box, but not programmed on the remote. I haven't read any posts about the feature being locked out of the DVR firmware completely, but have read a few about the feature not being included in default remotes available from the Cable/Satellite company and as soon as they got a remote that could use the feature it worked just fine.

Ya, I figured that their not having 30 second skip by default was to avoid giving people easy access to easy commercial skipping.

Good thing is I have Amazon Prime. Free two day delivery, which means my remote will be here when I get home from work tomorrow. I'll find out if it works then (I'm fairly confident it will).

I don't know of anyone who has Comcast in the area. I'm not even sure if Comcast is a local provider in western Michigan.

So, it's not enough that you can fast forward through the commercials, you need a skip button? I honestly don't know if my DVR remote has that (I think it does), but I never use it. I like fast forwarding through because then if I see something interesting, I can stop and watch it. There are a ton of pretty funny commercials out there. Obviously YMMV, but at the risk of waxing philosophical, sometimes the journey is just as important as the destination.

Harmony is the only answer.




That or go with a Crestron system and hire me to come program your whole house

The only thing I dislike about my 900 is it charges funny sometimes and knocks the clock in the remote off a few hours. Other than that, it works great!