I like the harmony remotes . There easy to program and work great, but if you cant run wires for an ir repeater your out of luck! You could use a pronto but the learning curve for programming is quite steep, but the limits are endless. The pronto will let you do rf so you dont have the complication of running more wires, but the downfall is you sacrifice labor of pulling wire vs. the price of the rf extender. The most reliable way is to go ahead and bite the bullet and run the additional wires needed for an ir repeater. That way any remote will be compatable. Im not familiar with the home theater master remotes but have heard alot of good things about them from this website. I think that I might be a little bias though.
What are you trying to control ex. reciever, tv, tivo? The reason I ask is some remotes are designed to interact with tivos and with other dvr's