Thanks for not going down that road again. But it sure sounded like that's where you were headed.

Burying something in menus is fine as long as it's consistent. It's the inconsistency that causes problem for anyone trying to write macros for universal remotes, regardless of the brand. As a former software designer myself I just don't think they take the universal remote user into account when designing the user interface. They focus on the user using the OEM remote and making that as simple as possible without considering the impact on UR users. This can be a problem with input selection where inputs only appear in the list if the device is powered on.

If I was doing the design and it really made sense to do a dynamic menu I would also give the user an option of doing static menus so it would work either way. Then again hardware mfrs are typically not that good with software and vice versa.