Page 1 of Cambridge Audio m500 remote control

I picked one of these beautys up from my local richer sounds this morning and I must say im pretty impressed, It took me a couple of hours but its now set up and fully functional for my TV, Video, DVD player, Satellite, Amp, CD player, Tape Deck, Tuner.

On the whole im pretty pleased with it and at only 30quid I think its a bit of a bargain(good for ps2 owners if they can borrow someone elses).

This item was edited on Sunday, 24th December 2000, 19:59

I was considering this as a replacement for my clutter of remotes - would you recommend it?
If you aren`t too busy any chance of answering a few quick posers?
Does it have any restrictions on learning ie memory or certain codes?
Did it learn easily? Is your sat a Sky digibox - just wondering if it will control one easily enough?
Also, perhaps most importantly, is it east to differentiate between which source you wish to control - my six year old will cope but my Wife does not have the same patience!
One final thing - does the odd numeric pad layout put you off?
Sorry for all the questions:)

This item was edited on Wednesday, 27th December 2000, 23:14

Yeah, spill the beans. My One4All 5 only goes so far (i.e. won`t work my crappy Goodmans CD player or my supersonic Encore 450. Or my second video, a crappy £60 ex-rental Sony VCR from Martin Dawes)

I bought the LCD touch screen model for all the gadgets we have here at Chez Reviewer, and the only niggle I have found is that it has problems learning commands for the Wharfie 750 machine. Apart from that it is great - the macro wizards are excellent - one button to boot up everything!

I presonally didnt want to have to spend £80 on a LCD remote and thought £30 was a good price to replace them all.

I have full control of my sky digibox with the remote and all of the sky buttons are marked up(info, services, tv guide etc etc)

My fiancee was a bit sceptical at first about using the remote, but took to it no problems(I was expecting all the other remotes to be out everytime I wanted to watch something) so I shouldn`t think your wife and kid will struggle. The buttons are clearly marked for basic functions, and I have added some functions which I didnt try explaining to her at first which allow me to control for instance the TV volume when I have DVD selected, and the screen ratio on tv / sat and dvd.

The learning procedure is simple, just put the remotes head to head, press learn and the required key and fire the desired control at it for a few seconds. This gave me a few problems at first, where I had pressed the buttons a couple of times while `learning` I found, for instance, when I tried changing channels the channel jumped two or three channels. However this isnt a problem if the remote recieves the information constantly while learning! There wasnt any functions that it wouldnt learn, this was my main concern as my Kenwood Hifi has a graphical remote control which seems to be of a non standard format, however it cant recieve information back from my hifi like the kenwood GRC could(obviously).

I didnt actuallly think anything of the odd numerical layout until the review I read pointed it out, so that wasnt a problem really, the backlit function is very handy for gettitng use to the keys, and the physical feel of the buttons helps you get used to it.

Remember this is *only* a learning remote, it will not replace lost remotes as it cannot have numerical codes for remotes entered into it like the cheap argos one4all remote`s. It is quite big, but that is expected for it does control 10 different types of devices.

I havent made use of the macro`s I would have liked to set one up to switch everything off, but seeing as most of my equipment uses a single on / off button I figured half the time it would switch some of my stuff off and some of it on and couldnt really figure any other proper uses for myself, although im sure some people would find it useful to macro different settins for speaker and equalizer levels which is very simple to do.

Hope that covers everything folks, sorry if its not well written but I only just got up and I`m feeling a little groggy :)

This item was edited on Thursday, 28th December 2000, 08:37