Yeah I don't program like that.. I tend to use the 4 buttons below the screen as the nav buttons. Button one (Left) as Transport Controls. 2 as Starburst and Menu controls. 3 as # digits. 4 as Logo Genere. You have to select Logo to get back to say Movies, Sports etc. Then when you enter a GEnre there are navigation tabs at the top of the screen.

No need for variables in that means.

Then there are variables for tracking equipment. Anyhting out side of power and things get a little screwy. Person turns off somehting by hand or a DVD player shuts down from inactivity.. then the On variabel is wrong. Press system off and it clears all flags then turn off everything to resync it.

Variable to track TV volume vs Preamp Volume.... just duplicate the device with cut and paste... VOL + - and Mute. Way faster then wrtiing and cordinating Flags.

Variable to track Play vs Pause... uhhh get rid of the samsung DVD player. It took me a few hours to get something that worked 90%... a 70 Buck Panasonic or Sony would have done it. Shoot They bill more than that for me to try to figure it out.

SENSORS MY MAN!

STORED MACROS

GOOD COMPONENTS TO CONTROL... wait that part isn't pronto its our product lines.

How I delt with a similar senario...
On the home/activites page I have a button in the bottom right that said Surround. This jumped to a seperate device that had DD DTS SURROUND STEREO CIRCLE as buttons. When you selected the home Icon it wne to a Duplicate Activites page that lacked the Surround Macro codes. Then the person selected the Source they wiched to return to or enter woith the current surround mode.

For the most part I have the App surround mode built into the macro on the Home / Activites Page like...
Jump to "Now Entering DVD mode"
Fuji -TV - Video 5
Marantz- Pre- On
Sony - DVD - On
Marantz - Pre - DVD
Fuji - TV - Video 5
Sony - DVD - Play
Marantz - Pre - DD/DTS EX/ES
(Sometimes I double up and repeat the above macro 2 times.)
Jump to "DVD Transport"

Return from surround screweing about usually just contained just the jumps or the macro minus the Surround sound Command.