Logitech Harmony 880

If you don't know the Harmony is Logitech's line of Universal Remotes. I found a Harmony 880 refurbished on Amazon.com for a decent price. The 880 features an LCD screen 4 soft buttons and plenty of hard buttons to control all of your normal remote features (numbers, play, rewind, fast forward, pause, etc). The remote can control up to 15 devices and can be programmed to perform up to 255 activities.
Activities are basically anything you want the remote to do. Examples could be to watch TV, watch a movie, listen to CD, play game, or pretty much anything you can think of. When you first open the Harmony remote you have to let it charge for a while until the battery is full. The remote does come with a charging cradle that you sit the remote in while it's not in use. Then connect the remote to your computer with the provided cable and launch the Harmony software. You do need to be connected to the internet for the software to launch because it needs to get the remote codes from an on-line database. After you enter your devices the wizard will help you set up the activities that you might do with the components you've entered. If you need to add any more the wizard can help you with that too. Also, if the software can't find remote codes for one of your devices or is missing a feature from the remote it can learn from your old remote by holding it up to the Harmony and pressing the button.
Once you get the remote set up like you want you just point it at your entertainment system and press an activity button. It will turn on all the right components and turn them to the right inputs for the specified activity, with just one press of a button. If something doesn't work correctly you can hit the help button and it will ask you questions and send out remote functions to try and correct the problem. You might have to do this the first time you use a function because the remote won't know which input a specified component is on, but it will remember from then on. This remote works really well and I've had no problems whatsoever out of it. I love it and it really does replace all four of the remote that I previously had to deal with. I would highly recommend this remote to anyone who has to use multiple remotes on a daily basis and especially anyone that has trouble remembering how to turn on all the components in your living room.