Do you use a universal remote? You need something to replace that stack of remotes sitting on your ottoman. I could potentially have five remotes sitting there, but I only have one. That’s because I bought a used Marantz RC2000 Mk II remote years ago and I love it. It’s actually a learning remote. A learning remote is one that can learn the codes directly from your remote. You hold your remote up to the learning remote, and push the button you want the learning remote to learn. The learning remote then learns it. You have to assign it a key as well. You go through this process for all the buttons on each remote you want to use. It’s tedious, but you get to put keys where you want and you get to choose which buttons to learn.

A universal remote is a little different. A universal remote has a bunch of codes already stored in its memory, and you just choose which set you want to use. If your remote codes are not stored in the remote, you’re out of luck. That usually doesn’t happen unless you have a particularly esoteric remote.

There are also remotes that are both learning and universal at the same time, so you get the best of both worlds.

Harman/Kardon licensed technology from Logitech’s Harmony brand to make this remote. It’s a universal remote with some flexibility, which is good. The Sound & Vision reviewer thinks highly of it. Once my Marantz bites the dust I’ll put this one on my list of remotes to look at.

Harman Kardon TC30 Universal Remote