Now, I know that ray has become the local guru on this stuff, and plenty of people have bought this unit on his recommendation. And for good reason.
But don't forget about some of the other options out there either.
If your system is not too complex, and mostly, you're interested in having your components spring to life at the press of one button, and have some macro capability so that when you press the button to "watch tv" you tv switches to the TV inoput, the receiver does the same, the cable box turns on, and everything turns off, I would check out:
harmonyremote.com
They've got some great stuff. You can set up everything on the internet and have it working flawlessly in 30 minutes. Your wife and strangers will have no problem negotiating the unit, etc.
For example - I have a neighbor come over once in a while to check on my puppy. I've found her a number of times staying longer and just hanging out, watching TV. My system is fairly complex (inasmuch as if you wanted to get everything to be on the correct input, etc. and have channel changing capability, voume control, etc. without toggling between devices, it coudl be confusing) and she had no problem turning everything on and sitting back and relaxing with the pooch.
Shoot, the buttons are even labelled 'watch tv' or 'listen to music'
you don't get much easier than that.
I'm nto sure about the price on the 700 that Ray will have you buy, but the Harmony, "family remote" it is called, can be had for about $125 online. check out
bluedo.com. they are an authorized dealer.
Happy remote hunting.
