Review on 📺 Revolutionize Your TV Experience with the Universal Remote Control MX-850 IR/RF Aeros Remote Control by Michelle Kelley

Let's say a car company sells you a car but won't let you drive it. They gave the keys to the chauffeur you paid for every time you needed to go somewhere. That's essentially what Universal Remote Control Inc decided to do with the MX-850 and many of the other products they sell. You can buy the remote control yourself, but no matter how experienced you are with programming, your dealer will have to program the remote control for you (at an additional cost, of course). Every time you add or change a component of your system, the chauffeur, i.e. the retailer, has to come back to program the changes (at an additional cost). This makes the MX-850 potentially the most expensive controller in the world. Most people who buy this product probably don't know about it (or are very rich). If you've ever purchased hardware from B&K you may know that they sell a proprietary version of that product, the SR10.1, but were kind enough to ship the software via their URC license agreement. If you have this software, do NOT assume it will work with a generic model of the same controller (MX-850) as the URC has rigged the process against you, so neither download nor upload programming will work with the SR10 -Software .1 performed does not work on the MX-850. Of course, programming this remote control may be too complicated for some people and URC would be justified in refusing free technical support to these people. However, their approach seems to be more than just avoiding the outrageous cost of selling this remote. This is a smart move that allows them to sell the software license to their dealers at a high price, but the dealers will be very happy to pay license fees which they, as your chauffeur, can easily recoup. I would call it a SCAM. While some vendors offer an alternative to this egregious approach and there may be ways to get fake copies of the software even if you can overcome this hurdle, be aware that there are other issues that need to be overcome. First you need a COMM port. And if you have a laptop, don't assume USB-DB9 type COMM ports will work. Most don't. If you decide to use your laptop's ExpressCard slot to create a COMM port, you should be aware that you're better off not using a 64-bit version of Windows, since communication is only works with a 32-bit version. The shortcomings of this remote control mentioned are of course more due to the very user-hostile attitude of the URC in marketing than to blaming the MX-850. The fact is that the MX-850 is one of the best remote controls out there. It is extremely flexible and has few design flaws. One is that macro coding is "compiled" rather than "assembled" at runtime. So if you get a new DVD player, all the macros that use its commands will have to be reprogrammed, even if the power button is in the same place. Unlike VB, for example, they don't treat the new DVD player as a replacement for a subprogram of the same name. Rather, they work like the old mainframe programming languages, which produce a compiled version of the code that includes all of the old IR code components (e.g., compiling a subroutine) and is completely unaware of the new component. To be honest this is old technology and maybe the URC made a marketing decision to hide it. But old technology is not necessarily bad technology. We still have the zipper, even though it gets stuck sometimes, right? And it is a pity that this product is now sold as described above. I hope that the URC will change their mind. Perhaps enough Internet chatter will stimulate it. Otherwise the product would have received a much better rating.