Sony RM-AX1400 LCD Remote Control

Having spent a year with one of the Logitech Harmony remotes, I'm now ready to throw it out the window. Search my other reviews to find out why.
So I shopped around and sniffed out this programmable unit from Sony. There's not many reviews out there so I'll attempt to cover as many bases as I can.
The unit itself is a little large and ergonomically, it's a bit challenging if you've got small hands. It's a bit brick-like. Most of the buttons light up blue with a user-definable brightness and delay, and the top of the remote has an OLED screen - greenish-yellow on black. This is where the status of the remote shows up along with three softkeys.
Below that are some XPRESS keys - these are like Macro keys on steroids - there's almost nothing you can't program these things to do, but they generally have to use functions programmed into the remote elsewhere. Below this are the regular number keys, arrow controls, player controls and so on and so forth.
To program the Sony, you need it connected to your PC, but, and I'm hugely in favour of this - you don't need it connected to the internet like the Logitech remotes. This means all the programming is done via your PC and kept locally, and as a result, the unit is as 100% customisable as a Philips Pronto. Nothing is hidden from you, unlike the Logitech devices where they assume you're an idiot and hide all the underlying functionality away where you can't get at it.

To program the unit, the software wizard steps you through a learning process. I'm told that it works quite well if it actually recognises your old remote. To do this, it will ask for a certain button to be pressed - play, power, something like that. Then it searches it's available preset device list for a matching code and configures the remote to match. Only it doesn't always work. Actually in my case, it didn't work for any of the 4 remotes I wanted to teach it. I'm not sure why but maybe if I'd installed the firmware update first, it would have been different.
Given that it couldn't find any of my devices, I had to do each one by hand. A bit laborious, but not too bad, and I had 100% success rate when doing it manually. Basically, the software steps through all the keys it thinks you'd want to use for the type of device you're programming, and asks you to fire your old remote at the new one so it can learn the infra-red code. At the end of this you have a roughly-configured set of keys. I say roughly, because this is where the fun starts if you're a tinkerer like me. Once you get to the 'advanced' settings, you can pretty much make this thing do anything. All the buttons in the advanced view are colour-coded to let you know if they've got a predetermined code on them, a learned code or an alias to another key elsewhere in the remote. Keys that don't have a colour assigned to them are blank and waiting to be used.
The process of manually learning codes from the advanced screen is a bit odd and the helpfile is bloody useless (you'll find that comment about this remote in ALL the reviews). Knowing how these reviews get propagated around the internet, I thought a quick how-to might be worth including here:
From the advanced screen, click the button for the device you want to customise and click "Edit Buttons". The software brings up a picture of the remote. Click the button you want to learn a code for and then click "Edit Actions". This is where the helpfile falls apart but it's actually pretty easy. On the 'Edit actions' screen there's another 'learn' button right at the bottom - click it and go through a manual learn process for that one button and voila - done.
The 'Edit actions' screen is also where the real power of the RM-AX1400 comes into play because here you can assign aliases to any other key already programmed and add delays. You can also stack up codes, aliases and delays together - effectively ANY key on the remote can become a macro. Clever, and nice for the technically-minded, but this precise feature is why this remote might not be great for the people who just want to pick it up and go.
There's been a little discussion here and there on the remote forums about the Jump function of this remote. Simply put, it just changed the display and remote key functions. So for example if you want to create a macro to watch a movie, you can power on your DVD, power on the receiver, power on the TV, set the receiver to the DVD input and then Jump the remote to the DVD settings. It's a nice touch and it means that when you hit the "movie" macro, everything turns on and the remote ensures it's in DVD mode when the macro is complete.
Most of the keys that you program can be assigned a name that shows up in the middle line of the OLED display when you push the button. One thing that's a little irritating is that by default, only the outer two of the soft buttons can be programmed for any device, and by default, they have their labels set to POWER and INPUT. There's no way to change this in the software, however, if you're not afraid of a little XML programming, your remote's configuration is all stored in an XML file called urmgui.xml. The way to manually override the default labels is to set everything up the way you want it, then assign some easily-identifiable name to the softkey you want to rename, like "ZZZZ1". Save the file out of the software and then open up the XML file in a text editor and search for "ZZZZ1". You'll find an XML button definition with two labels. The first label is the 6-character softkey label - the one that defaults to "POWER" or "INPUT". The second label is the name you can enter that shows up in the middle line of the display - in this case "ZZZZ1". Change both to be what you want and you're done.
Why all this detail? Well my projector, for example, has a power button on the remote that turns the projector on. But to turn it off, you need to push the button, wait a moment for the confirmation on the screen, then push it again. So I assigned the two soft keys so that one was "power on" which issued the remote code once, the other was "power off" which issued it twice with a half-second delay in between (using the advanced editor functions). The problem was that one label said "POWER" and the other said "INPUT" so I changed them in the XML file to say "PWRON" and "PWROFF".

So apart from all the nauseating technical detail, what's it like to use? Well apart from the slightly odd form factor which makes it a bit clunky for smaller hands, it's a delight to use in a darkened room to control a home theatre system. All the buttons are logically placed, and a user-configurable beep lets you know you've pushed the button and it's sent the remote code. The buttons have a slightly squishy sensation to them but I prefer this to the horrible 'click' on the Harmony remotes. Unlike the Logitech Harmony remotes that have a weird delay on the volume controls, I can press and hold the volume controls on the Sony and my receiver smoothly ramps the volume up and down - something I could never get my Harmony remote to do. A couple of the buttons you'd expect to be illuminated, aren't, which is a bit of a mystery. Like the 'menu' button. Fortunately, it's placed right next to the arrow keys so it's easy to memorise its location, and that in essence is what makes this remote so nice for me - hard buttons. I don't need to look at the remote to know where the keys are. Philips Prontos are all very nice, but you always have to look at the screen to see what the buttons do. With the Sony, it's like a well-laid out TV remote, even if it is a bit brick-like.

One last feature worth mentioning - the software has a backup facility which stores a binary dump of your remote on to your PC for safekeeping. So if you're messing around with the software and screw everything up, you can restore the backup and start again.

So would I recommend this? I answered 'yes' to the epinions question and gave it 4/5 stars. It drops one star because my 'yes' answer really only applies for people who are technologically savvy and willing to give this remote the time it deserves to get the most out of it. Honestly if you want a "plug'n'play" type remote, you'd probably be better off looking elsewhere.