I agree that it isnt always comfortable to hold a touchscreen or to have one on a table by the seating area. In this situation we also sell and install a 'wife' remote. Very simple control, no bells and whistles. Mainly this is for watching television and channel surfing. Crestron has various handheld units with hard buttons for tactile feel and that is what usually ends up in the system as well or if the sat receiver allows the capability for RF control with the factory remote we sometimes go that route. At my house I use the RF factory remote about 50% of the time for channel surfing, the other 50% of the time I use the channel presets(macros) for surfing.