The Schrug

Just about any piece of home theater equipment you buy these days comes with what the manufacturer says is a “universal remote.” What that really means is that you can take what they give you, spend an hour trying to figure out how to program it to control other devices, and then realize that the most you can hope for is a “universal on/off switch.”

The Logitech remotes are different. Instead of punching in arcane codes, you program them through a USB cable attached to your computer. You tell your computer what equipment you own, and it configures the remote control for you. Because it’s designed as a universal remote from the ground up, it has ALL the buttons that ALL of your devices have, and what buttons it’s missing appear on its LCD screen. (For example, it has no specific hardware button to list the contents of my DirecTV DVR, but it knows that I need one.)

What I like best is the back-lighting, which makes it easy to find buttons in the dark. And I love that it’s somehow motion-sensitive. The lights come on automatically when I pick it up.

Yes, it’s a bit crazy to spend more on a remote control than we used to spend on a television, but it sure is fun.

For more details, see the Logitech web site. The best price we found was at Amazon.