In terms of universal remote, most fall into two major categories. URC and Harmony. I have Harmony 890 (Hated...it!) and MX900+MRF350 (LOVE IT).
Harmony is great in that it's *SO* simple to program and get the activities right. It also has state information so it knows what devices are on or off automatically. The price you pay for this simplicity is lack of complex macros. You're limited to seven or so steps and that's it. I only have experience with 890 and it's RF is not *that* great. I constantly have to hit buttons multiple times for it to register. That my have something to do with **TINY** buttons/keys on the remote.
URC's MX900 (old model now) is a little more complicated to program, but it's not rocket science. And you get UNLIMITED control over every action. I like the fact that you can make the receiver your "master sound source" so that all sound related functions (mute, vol+/- etc) defaults to the receiver no matter where you are. I like the fact that you can create state information for any function. For example, my SUBTTL macro turns on or off the subtitle depending on whether it was on or off. If it's on, it turns it off and vice versa. It's important because my settop box has three options, SUBTITLE ON, Off, On with mute. So I need to know what it was set at. Finally, MRF350 comes with an IR sniffer mode so that you can find a spot with the least interference.
I posted some shots of the programming/button layout but I couldn't get it to show up inline (just the URL's showed up)
Oh, one more thing. Harmony has accelerometers built in so the backlighting will come on automatically. But it also uses custom rechargeable batteries. I much prefer the four AAAs that go into my MX900 (light button is manual and on the side of the remote).
